20 years of war Afghanistan was an obscure country in the highlands of central Asia until December 1979. Then the Soviet army invaded and it became a massive battleground for the last stages of the Cold War - and a training ground for Islamic guerrillas from all over the world. The Soviets left back in 1990 and the country is still deep in civil war.
Rival warlords fight for supremacy over enormous stretches of mountainous terrain.
They all claim to be Islamic . The Taliban currently control the capital Kabul and it is this group, formed in the Afghan refugee camps of Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, that has captured the headlines recently. They practice a fanatically strict interpretation of Islamic law - not only making women wear the veil , for example, but also banning them from working and girls from going to school. They have also carried out public executions for adultery . Other Muslim countries, including Iran , have condemned them for having a faulty interpretation of what Islam is about.