With international media attention focused on the Yugolsav province of Kosovo, older conflicts such as that in Afghanistan, have faded into the background. But though any war has its own specific nature and motives, each also provides vital lessons.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, it sought to use a "limited contingent" to stabilize what had become a chaotic and unpredictable political situation after a Soviet-backed government took power in Kabul in what became known as the Saur (April) revolution.

In fact, the event was not a revolution at all, but a coup d'etat staged by a handful of primarily Moscow-educated Marxists.

But factional infighting split the weak new government. After Deputy Prime Minister Hafizullah Amin murdered President Nur Mohammed Taraki, the Soviet Union's Politburo made the decision to go into Afghanistan.

Taraki had been in Moscow only weeks before, and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev took the murder as an affront. Meanwhile, the KGB suspected that Amin was planning to make overtures to the United States, which was looking for a new base in the region in the wake of Iran's Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Shah and deprived the U.S. of its main ally in the area.

Soviet military operations began when special forces stormed the presidential palace in Kabul and killed Amin. But initial successes quickly soured. The Soviet Union had obvious military superiority but came up against a resentful population determined to fight its invaders.

What began as a "limited contingent" soon increased to 85,000 men caught up in protracted and bloody fighting as Afghans fled towns and villages and organized Mujahedin (Islamic resistance) groups. What was supposed to be a quick war fought between a well-equipped superpower and a small, backward country, became a 10-year-long ordeal that played a crucial role in eventually undermining the Soviet regime.

Small wars are much easier to start than stop. What seems simple and straightforward in the military planning room often becomes tangled and impossible to manage on the ground. Like the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union found itself with no easy exit from a war that became increasingly unpopular at home.

The Soviet Union only found a way out in 1988, signing the Geneva accords that set a timetable for troop withdrawal. The first Soviet soldiers left Afghanistan in May 1988, and withdrawal continued through February 1989. Official Soviet statistics put the U.S.S.R.'s total death toll at 13,826. Over the 10 years that the war dragged on, 546,255 Soviet officers and soldiers fought in Afghanistan.

In a speech delivered in February 1988, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev called the conflict in Afghanistan one of the most bitter and painful regional conflicts. He expressed hope that the different factions would stop fighting and begin building a permanent peace. "What kind of peace?" he added, answering, "The kind the Afghan people will choose."

Noble sentiments indeed, but 10 years of war and geo-political rivalry made Gorbachev's words an impossible dream. The country the Afghans inherited was in tatters. Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet foreign minister, visited Kabul after Soviet troops pulled out. "We are forced to admit that we're leaving this country in a truly lamentable state, towns and villages are in ruins, the capital is starving, the economy is virtually paralyzed ... hundreds of thousands of people have been killed," he said after the visit.

Afghanistan was left with an abundance of arms, both Soviet and western. The Mujahedin, seen as freedom fighters in their struggle against the Soviet Union, received arms supplies from the United States as well as military training in Pakistan. After the Soviet pull-out, the Kremlin propped up the pro-Moscow government in Kabul headed by former Afghan secret police chief Najibullah; but the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. precipitated the leader's own downfall.

Najibullah held out longer than most thought he would, balancing the interests of different ethnic groups. But he was dependent on Soviet aid. When that aid dried up, his government collapsed in 1992. He was publicly executed when the Taliban group, a radical Islamic student militia, captured Kabul.

By then, civil war had bled the country dry. Fighting Soviet forces was the only factor uniting the Mujahedin. Once Soviet troops pulled out, various Mujahedin groups began fighting one another.

Many ethnic groups live in Afghanistan, including Uzbeks, Tajiks and Pashtuns. Unlike in the Balkans, these ethnic groups all share the same religion-Islam. Mujahedin groups had formed chiefly along ethnic lines, but ethnic rivalry was not so much the root of the new conflict as an instrument in the struggle for power.

Afghanistan's neighbors, including the newly independent states of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, all pushed their own agendas. Afghanistan was always considered highly strategic, witnessed by the Anglo-Russian rivalry in the region throughout the 19th century.

But the appearance of the Taliban movement surprised many. The Talibans received backing from Pakistan and, to some extent, from America. The goal was to stabilize the region, to end the constant fighting and shifting alliances that followed the Soviet pull-out.

The Talibans have taken control of most of Afghanistan, but the price of their relative stability has been high. The Talibans turned out to have little interest in freedom or other fine ideals. Their fanatical and obscurantist regime is probably one of the cruelest in the world. Now that Taliban leaders have tasted power, they are not likely to ever want to give it up.

The Soviet Union achieved nothing in Afghanistan just as the United States achieved nothing in Vietnam. Soviet soldiers sent to fight in Afghanistan were told they were risking their lives for a worthy cause. But today, Afghanistan produces little more than opium for the world drug market-and refugees. Meanwhile, the Talibans inflict suffering on their own people in a way that makes Najibullah's Marxist regime look mild and humane.

"Who gains from these conflicts?" Gorbachev asked in his 1988 speech. "No one except the arms dealers." The tragedy is that it took a decade of fighting to reveal this truth, one the world will have to learn again and again.