Author: Elisabeth Leake 

Elisabeth Leake’s Afghan Crucible tells the history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan — an invasion whose consequences both Afghanistan and the wider world are still living.

The Soviet war, and parallel covert American aid to Afghan resistance fighters, would come to be a defining event of international politics in the final years of the Cold War, lingering far beyond the Soviet Union’s own demise.

This sweeping history moves between centers of state in Kabul, Moscow, Islamabad, and Washington, the halls of global governance in Geneva and New York, resistance hubs in Peshawar and Panjshir, and refugee camps scattered across Pakistan’s borderlands to tell its expansive story.