Part II: Lessons From Post-Soviet Afghanistan Haunt Debate on Syria --- The fire of civil war raged in Afghanistan for more than a decade between the Soviet pullout and the United States-led invasion in 2001. Some 400,000 Afghans lost their lives as a result of fighting between militia factions and the mujahedin, and later the Taliban, who emerged from the mujahedin and rose to power in the late 1990s. I asked some of the other Afghan officers and noncommissioned officers I worked with what they did during those years. Some had similar stories of fighting in the army, some fled to stifling refugee camps in Iran or Pakistan, others fought in the militias. All had tragic stories of death and loss. - KRISTEN ROUSE, nytimes