• 700's - Islamic conquerors
  

• 1300 - 1400's - Genghis Khan and Tamerlane conquered the country
  

• 1839–1842 Anglo-Afghan war
  

• 1878–1880 Anglo-Afghan war
  

• 1893 UK established an unofficial border separating Afghanistan from British India
  

• 1919 Afghanistan became independent
  

• 1926 Emir Amanullah founded an Afghan monarchy
  

• 1950's Afghanistan developed close ties with the Soviet Union during the cold war
  

• 1978 Military coup Afghanistan became a Marxist regime
  

• 1979 Soviets launched an invasion of Afghanistan
  

• 1989 Soviet withdrawal
  

• 1992 Islamic rebellion - in-fighting between rebel groups
  

• 1996 A group of Islamic students calling itself the Taliban seized control of Kabul
  

• 1996 The Taliban took over the government of Afghanistan but the government was only recognised by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
  

• August 20, 1998, U.S. cruise missiles struck a terrorist training complex in Afghanistan believed to have been financed by Osama bin Laden
  

• September 2001 anti-Taliban guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Masoud of the group referred to as the Northern Alliance was killed by suicide bombers
  

• September 11 2001 - Taliban terrorists - al-Qaeda members - attacked New York's World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon
  

• October 7 2001 - The Taliban refused to turn over Bin Laden and the U.S. and its allies began daily air strikes against Afghan military installations
  

• December 7 2001 - the Taliban regime collapsed
  

• December 2001 - Afghanistan interim government formed
  

• June 2002 - Hamid Karzai became President
  

• 2002 - 2003 - Peacekeeping forces entered the country
  

• March 2003 - US Offensive against Kandahar and al-Qaeda members
  

• August 2003 - NATO assumed command of peacekeeping troops
  

• January 4, 2004 - New constitution introduced
  

Ahmad Shah DURRANI unified the Pashtun tribes and founded Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer between the British and Russian empires until it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist regime, but withdrew 10 years later under relentless pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist mujahedin rebels. A civil war between mujahedin factions erupted following the 1992 fall of the Communist regime. The Taliban, a hardline Pakistani-sponsored movement that emerged in 1994 to end the country's civil war and anarchy, seized Kabul in 1996 and most of the country outside of opposition Northern Alliance strongholds by 1998. 

Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, a US, Allied, and Northern Alliance military action toppled the Taliban for sheltering Osama Bin Ladin. 

01/03/07 - U.S. Army Soldiers from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 102nd Infantry Regiment, Connecticut National Guard walk up the side of a hill to look at caves near the village of Showki in the Kabisa province of Afghanistan Jan. 3, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Isaac A. Graham)

In late 2001, a conference in Bonn, Germany, established a process for political reconstruction that included the adoption of a new constitution and a presidential election in 2004, and National Assembly elections in 2005. 

On 7 December 2004, Hamid KARZAI became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. The National Assembly was inaugurated on 19 December 2005.

World's largest producer of opium

Afghanistan Opium Field

Credit: United Nations

In 1803, a German pharmacist, F.W. Sertürner isolated the main alkaloid of opium and named it morphine after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Morphine was soon widely used for medical purposes in Europe and the U.S. But by the end of the century, addiction to the drug had become a problem. In 1898, while searching for a non-addictive substitute for morphine, Heinrick Dresser, working at the Bayer Laboratory in Germany, developed diacetylmorphine. Bayer marketed it under the brand name Heroin. The new drug, however, turned out to be up to ten times more potent than morphine.

Opium poppies may look like innocent flowers out of a painting by Henri Matisse, but deep within their pods lies a substance that can be processed into heroin, a highly addictive drug used by 13 million people worldwide. In wartorn Afghanistan, opium poppies can be grown easily and bring in much-needed cash. But growing poppies is just the start. Before poppy pods can hit the streets as "junk," "horse" or "smack" (or as their chemical cousins, opium and morphine), they must undergo a long and complicated refining process.

Papaver somniferum, one of the few species of poppy that produces opium, is an annual plant with a growth cycle of 120 days. Farmers plant seeds, which range in color from white to yellow to brown and gray, in shallow holes. Within six weeks a cabbage-like plant emerges. It takes eight weeks for the poppy plant to grow about one to two feet. Each poppy has one long primary stem with secondary stems called tillers. As the plant continues to grow, a bud develops at the tip. After 90 days, the bud blossoms into a flower with four petals in a variety of colors. The petals fall away to reveal a green pod or ghozah that will continue to grow to the size of an egg. Inside the pod is the ovary that produces opium. Opium, which contains over 50 types of alkaloids including codeine and morphine, is only produced during the ten to 12 day period when the pod is ripening. Once the pod reaches maturity, the alkaloids in the opium are no longer made.

Areas In Afghanistan where opium is grown