For many decades, the key task of modern Afghanistan has been to ensure rapid modernization by overcoming the medieval foundations of the socio-economic organization of society. How to achieve this is a fundamental question, the answer to which is still open. Keywords: Afghanistan, People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, Taliban, Mujahideen, Limited Contingent of Soviet troops (OKSV), USA and Afghanistan, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), modernization. Due to a number of historical circumstances, the awareness of the ruling circles of Afghanistan of the need to overcome its socio-economic backwardness did not meet with an adequate response from local tribal and religious-conservative elites. Attempts to modernize society under various, sometimes diametrically opposed, political and ideological slogans did not lead to the desired results. This was the case during the reign of the eccentric reformist monarch Amanullah in the 1920s, and during the more than four decades of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, a moderate advocate of constitutional evolution in the late post-war years. So it was under the authoritarian General Mohammed Daoud, who in the early seventies, under the slogan of bourgeois transformation, abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the country a republic, and under the People's Democratic Party (PDPA). After the 1978 coup, its leaders set out to "socialize" Afghanistan on the Soviet model. In 1992, the Mujahideen overthrew the PDPA regime, but without reaching an internal compromise in the distribution of spheres of influence, they could not stay in power for long. Their place was easily taken by extremists from the radical religious-nationalist Taliban movement. Having pushed their opponents to the northern provinces bordering Central Asia, they began to enforce a rigid theocratic rule with odious religious foundations. The Taliban were not able to offer any miraculous recipes for economic development. On the contrary, their demonstrative disr ... Читать далее