Soviet troops entered Afghanistan on December 25, 1979 in support of the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and left 13 years later, on February 15, 1988.
Speaking at a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which comes on December 10, Karzai said that the Soviet invasion had led to almost 30 years of continuous war, ushering in a long period of widespread human rights abuse.
He said that human rights in Afghanistan had been finally extinguished under the rule of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic group that ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being toppled by a U.S.-led military force.
"There is not a single Afghan family which has not suffered from war. In the period of Soviet occupation, people were thrown into prison...and killed. Unfortunately, there were some people in our country who supported the invasion. The Soviet forces left, but then battles between different groups of Mujahedeen began, and then the Taliban came," he said.
"The observance of human rights is currently better than last year, and in five years' time it will have improved significantly," he went on.
Karzai noted, however, that Taliban forces were continuing human rights abuses in some parts of the country, speaking of a recent incident in which a 15-year old boy was burnt alive and three-year old child shot dead, saying such cases could make "even beasts weep."
