World

Bombings: Background Briefing

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 7, 1998 / 11:54 AM EDT / CBS

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AFGHANISTAN

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Afghanistan is a remote mountainous nation in the embrace of fundamentalist Islam, and it has long been a second home to Osama bin Laden, the Islamic militant.

War has torn the central Asian nation since 1979, when Soviet troops invaded to oust one leftist leader, replace him with another, and touch off popular resistance among traditionalist, anti-communist Afghans, whose forces were aided by thousands of like-minded Arabs, including bin Laden, who flocked to the battlefront.

In 1989, a beleaguered Soviet Union finally withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, and three years later the Moscow-allied government collapsed under pressure from Islamic rebel forces.

Because of ethnic and other quarrels, the victorious rebels soon fell to fighting among themselves, in a sporadic war that now appears near its end with a final triumph for the extreme fundamentalists of the Taliban movement.

Afghanistan's 24 million people are among the world's poorest, millions eking out a living (when cease-fires allow) by farming and raising sheep and goats. Its paltry exports include hand-woven carpets, some gems, fruits and nuts.

Afghanistan, in size slightly smaller than Texas, is believed to be the world's second-largest producer of illicit opium and is a major source of hashish.

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SUDAN

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The largest country in Africa, Sudan has had a long-simmering conflict with the United States over its Islamic government.

Sudan, one of the continent's poorest countries, has been bogged down in a 15-year civil war in the south that has left 1.5 million people dead from the fighting and ensuing famines.
The current Islamic government, which took power in a 1989 coup, has been clear in its hostility toward Washington.

Hassan Turabi, Sudan's Islamic leader, is believed to be the power behind the government of President Omar Hassan el-Bashir.

Sudan has been on Washington's ist of states sponsoring terrorism since 1993. Washington has frozen Sudanese assets in the United States, blocked trade with Sudan and banned U.S. investments in the country in an effort to limit the government's power.

The United States cut all but humanitarian aid to Sudan in 1989.