The North Vietnamese had intense support from their direct northern neighbor, China. Since China was communist, and wanted to spread communism around Asia, they gave them weapons and armed them with a lot of weapons. Nixon pledged to end the Vietnamese War in 1968 because of the damage it was doing to the United States. However, through turning over the war to South Vietnam, there was actually an increase in Vietnamese strife. The Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war in January of 1973. This was a very intricate set of rules signed between Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, North Vietnam, the National Liberation Front, and Vietnam. However, the war still went on even when the U.S. withdrew from it, and these agreements were defied quickly.
The soviets intervened because antigovernment rebels controlled much of the Afghan countryside. By intervening, they tried to establish more control over the country. Babraj Marmal was Marxist, and was made president of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. With the help of Soviet land and air forces, and civilian advisors, he established control over Afghanistan. The United States helped Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan by providing them with weapons and money to maintain their position. The main weapons they provided were the ground-to-air Stinger missiles which could be used to shoot down Soviet helicopters. The Taliban was reported to be an army of religious students who captured the Afghan capital of Kabul after an eleven month siege, they they executed Najibullah and claimed Afghanistan as an Islamic state.
