Ossama Bin Laden, a Saudi businessman, is encouraged by the USA to set up training camps in Afganistan. In one action, Bin Laden led his men to attack a mixed school (of boys and girls - set up by the previous regime) and kill all the teachers.
After the defeat of the USSR, the fighters turn on each other. After years of atrocities the country comes under the Taliban. They introduce an extreme form of Islam in the country and are politically and culturally anti-Western. Education for girls and women is banned and women must be completely covered if going out.
No help or support is offered to Afganistan by the USA or Europe once the USSR is expelled and the country is left to stagnate.
In 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to the USA president, Jimmy Carter, would admit that the USA began sending military aid to Afghanistan's Islamic fighters six months before the USSR invasion. He believed (and told the president) that "this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention". Brzezinski went on to say "The secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap... Indeed for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war..."
The suffering of the Afghan people was a side issue of the Cold War. 50% of the Aghan population would end up dead, disabled, or as refugees.
