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For much of the 19th century, Afghanistan was in the middle of the rivalry between Great Britain and Russia; the British wished to protect their Indian colony to the south and east, while the Russians, challenging British dominance in Europe, were steadily advancing their control southward through Central Asia. By 1878, however, much of the tension between Britain and Russia was relieved by the Congress of Berlin. Russia agreed to respect Afghanistan's borders and regard the country as being within Britain's sphere of influence, but nonetheless sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul. (Baxter, 2001)

Afghanistan achieved independence from Britain in 1921 after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, when Britain agreed to let Afghanistan handle its own foreign affairs. Even earlier, however, Afghanistan's King Habibullah established friendly relations with the new Communist leadership of the Soviet Union, trading emissaries with Lenin's government in 1919. Both sides had ulterior motives in this. The Afghanis were taking advantage of the breakdown in British-Russian relations that followed the 1917 October Revolution in Russia to break the British hold on Afghanistan, while the Soviets on the other hand were eager to establish friendly relations with neighboring Muslim countries, to prevent unrest among their own large Muslim populations in their Central Asian satellites. (Baxter, 2001) This policy is generally believed to be at the heart of the Soviets' later decision to invade the country. (Dick, 1987, and Baxter, 2001) In addition, virulently anti-Bolshevik British sentiment during the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution gave the Soviet leaders justifiable cause to worry about support for their enemies coming through British India. (Baxter, 2001)

Indian independence and the partition of the former British colony into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947 led to a large increase in Soviet influence in Afghanistan. Between 1950 and 1955, the so-called Pashtunian Crisis, caused by the arbitrary split in Pashtun tribal homelands by the new Pakistani border, led to a near-war between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan closed the border between the two countries, virtually cutting off land-locked Afghanistan's trade. Afghanistan sought assistance from the U.S., but Pakistan was, as a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), already a U.S. ally, and so Afghanistan turned to the Soviet Union. (Dick, 1987) A relationship of trade, economic,

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