After the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan in 1989, defeated by an insurgency equipped and guided by the U.S., a two-word cable arrived at CIA headquarters: “WE WON.”
It was one of the last moments of the Cold War, credited with helping push the Soviet Union to collapse two years later. But the U.S. would leave behind a country that rapidly fell into civil war, eventually becoming al-Qaida's training grounds for the Sept. 11 attacks and the site of a two-decade war that ended in U.S. withdrawal and defeat.
