The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan more rapidly than intelligence officials expected. Here’s a look at the nine days that sealed the group’s yearslong takeover. Illustration ...

Afghanistan is many things. It may or may not be a graveyard of empires, depending on which end of the shovel you happen to be on. It is definitely one of the lands that produces more military history ...

This story appears in the November/December 2016 issue of National Geographic History magazine ... a year before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Russian archaeologist Viktor Ivanovich ...