Afghan Army
branch of the Afghan Armed Forces
The Islamic National Army of Afghanistan, also referred to as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Army, and simply as the Afghan Army, is the land force branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. The roots of an army in Afghanistan can be traced back to the early 18th century when the Hotak dynasty was established in Kandahar followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise to power. It was reorganized in 1880 during Emir Abdur Rahman Khan's reign. Afghanistan remained neutral during the First and Second World Wars. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the Afghan Army was equipped by the Soviet Union.
After the resignation of President Mohammad Najibullah in 1992, the army effectively dissolved. In 1996 the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban regime) took power, creating their own army, which lasted until the United States invasion of Afghanistan in October–November 2001.
In mid-2001, with the Taliban dispersed, the British and the United States began creating a new Afghan National Army (ANA). By 2013, the Afghan government transferred security responsibilities from NATO to the ANA. However, over the next several years the government slowly lost territory to the Taliban, and eventually collapsed, with Kabul falling to the Taliban in 2021. The majority of training of the ANA was undertaken in the Kabul Military Training Centre.
The public source identifies “Afghan Army” as branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Afghan, Army and branch.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Afghan Army”, the useful work is to connect “branch of the Afghan Armed Forces” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q383108. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880, 1992, 1996 and 2001.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Afghan Army primary sources, Afghan Army archive and Afghan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Afghan Army” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.