POLITICAL BACKGROUND - HAMID KARZAI

POLITICAL BACKGROUND The former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) occupied Afghanistan from 1979 until early 1989. By late 1987, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that one million Afghans had died in the fighting between Soviet troops and the mujahidin resistance forces (supported by arms from the United States and Islamic nations such as Pakistan). The Soviets...

ALBANIA - FATOS THANA NANO - PRIME MINISTER

  The Republic of Albania is situated in southeastern Europe and is bordered to the south by Greece, to the east by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), to the north by Serbia and Montenegro, and to the west by the Adriatic Sea. The total area is 28,748 sq km (17,864 sq mi), of which over two-thirds is mountainous and the rest river valleys and coastal lowlands. The country’s total...

AFGHANISTAN - HAMID KARZAI

  The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, located in Central Asia, is a landlocked nation slightly smaller than Texas. It has a total land area of 647,500 sq km (250,001 sq mi). It is bordered on the north by the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, on the east and south by Pakistan, and on the west by Iran. A strip of land less than 80 km (50 mi) wide and known as...