The author of this book, retired Guard Lieutenant Colonel Valery Grigorievich Marchenko, took part in combat operations in the Republic of Afghanistan, where he commanded the reconnaissance group of the 80th separate reconnaissance company of the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, the reconnaissance company of the 350th Guards Airborne Division regiment (the famous “fifty dollars”), the 3rd parachute battalion of the 317th guards parachute regiment, the Shahjoy garrison of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, awarded two Orders of the Red Star, the Order of the Red Banner of the Republic of Afghanistan, 19 medals. Based on personal experience and accurate knowledge of the situation in the region, Valery Grigorievich offers to look at the events in Afghanistan in 1979–1989 from the point of view of modern geopolitics. It was there, in Afghanistan, that the monster of modern international terrorism was born. There the Soviet Union and the United States, socialism and capitalism, collided. China's geopolitical claims also played an important role in the situation. What exactly was happening in Afghanistan then? Why did the USSR send troops into this region and why did our military fight there? The book "Afghan Rift" answers these and other equally complex questions. And without answers to them, it is impossible to understand what is happening today in the Middle East, when the Russian Aerospace Forces are fighting ISIS (an extremist organization banned in the Russian Federation), and the US military is not yet openly, but as then, in Afghanistan, is again opposing them.< /p>