The contest for Kabul ended on April 30, 1992, at least a phase of the struggle resolved in favor of Ahmed Shah Massoud. To bring order in the embattled city and establish a stable Afghan government, he moved into the capital late in the night with ten thousand troops. Richard Mackenzie, an American journalist who rode with the convoy, reported that it

Leading up to Massoud’s triumph were layers of gamesmanship by major and minor powers in the world and factious politics among the tribes of Afghanistan. The financial drain and political embarrassment associated with the Russian intrusion into Afghanistan so undermined the Communist Party, the KGB, and the military that they led to the downfall of the Soviet Union itself, which in turn, precipitated enormous changes on the Afghan scene. Political and social upheavals in the Soviet Union had brought Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin to power and weakened Marxist control of Afghan policy. The old Red Guard of the Red Army and hard-line Stalinists, who strongly favored the continuation of the ruling Marxist regime in Kabul, lost their grip over military and political affairs.

Meanwhile, the US had gambled billions of dollars in military aid to Pakistan, which Saudi Arabia had matched dollar for dollar with aid to the Mujahideen in their conflict with the USSR. At the time of the ragged withdrawal of the Russians, Pakistan had its own plans for Afghanistan. Pakistan leaders wanted to secure Afghanistan for themselves as a rear guard in the event of war with India. As president of Pakistan, Zia ul-Haq wielded absolute control over the distribution of Saudi aid money. Through the ISI, the Pakistan government set into motion a small anti-Western faction headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, loyal to the Pakistani military dictatorship. Perhaps in hindsight, given the current political situation in Southwestern Asia, at the time of the Soviet withdrawal the US should have taken a stand for the future of the Afghan nation-state—but it did not, so the local factions struggled against each other to gain dominance.

On May 4, 1986, Dr. Najibullah replaced Babrak Karmal as President of the Republic of Afghanistan in a Soviet-backed action to make a PDPA government more acceptable to the citizens.

The Geneva Accords were signed on April 14, 1988. This bilateral agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan, guaranteed by the USSR and the USA, called for a phased withdrawal of Soviet Union troops from Afghanistan to begin in May 1988 and to be completed by February 15, 1989. As promised the last Soviet troops departed on February 15, 1989. The government headed by Najibullah, however, didn’t collapse as the Mujahideen and the Pakistan government had hoped. In early March 1989 the Afghan interim government, formerly the seven parties, organized and launched the battle of Jalalabad, where they planned to set up a government on Afghan soil on the road from Peshawar to Kabul. Dissension and distrust among the Mujahideen group leaders prevented taking Jalalabad for their alternative capital to Kabul and thereby strengthened Najibullah’s position.

On August 1991 an abortive coup took place in the Soviet Union, which rendered the Communist Party defunct. Six days later, Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, President of the Interim Government (AIG) of Afghanistan, received an invitation from Russian President Boris Yeltsin for talks to bring the Afghan crisis to an honorable and principled end.

By mid-April, 1992, as the Mujahideen were closing in on Kabul, the Soviet Union replaced President Najibullah with a council of Afghan Army officers and political associates in the Watan Party. A powerful group of Afghan military commanders—the Afghanistan Army Chief of Staff General Mohammud Asif Dilawar; along with General Mohammad Mouman, his 17th Division Commander, General Nabi Azimee, his Kabul Garrision Commander; and General Baba Jhan, his Begram Airport Commander—agreed to assist Ahmed Shah Massoud in taking control of Kabul. Also Rashid Dostum, a powerful militia leader from the Uzbek area of Northern Afghanistan, who had been an important element in the success of Najibullah, made a deal with Commander Massoud and Najibullah’s senior figures in government.

A cooperation accord founded an Islamic Jihad Council of government militia and Mujahideen forces between Abdul Wakil, the Afghan Foreign Minister, and Commander Massoud. Their exclusion of Hekmatyar’s Hesbi-I-Islami faction shocked the political-military establishment in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif held hotly contested meetings with the ISI chief, his other ministers, and the Mujahideen in Peshawar and the Hezbi-I-Islami faction, headed by Hekmatyar, who was deeply loyal to the Pakistan military dictatorship. Hekmatyar’s troops started firing mortars into Kabul. Najibullah took refuge in the UN compound after being stopped by General Dostum’s forces from boarding a United Nations airplane at the Kabul airport.

On April 24 the Afghan army and the Mujahideen took Kabul peacefully, and throughout the city the various factions staked out zones of control. An Afghan coalition formed an interim government in Peshawar: a 50-member Leadership Council agreed to be led for the first two months by Professor Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, as "caretaker Interim President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan. This council comprised 30 commanders, ten ulema (religious leaders), and one nominated member from each of the ten major Mujahideen parties. The goal of the council was to transfer power to an interim government headed by Jamiat-i-Islami’s Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was to serve four months while preparations were being made for elections. The Cabinet positions were to be equally divided among the parties.

Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, leader of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA), challenged the caretaker agreement. He refused to join a government with Hekmatyar, a Hesb-i-Islami, as Prime Minister. At the same time, Abdul Ali Mazari, representing the alliance of Iran-based Shia parties, declared the council unacceptable because his group was not represented at all.

Next, Mujaddedi promoted Dostum, the ex-communist Uzbek, to the rank of full general in an official ceremony in Mazar-i-Sharif. All the Mujahideen groups disapproved, as did Ahmed Shah Massoud, the newly appointed Minister of Defense; so Dostum’s forces became unruly then violent in the Kabul area. They began confiscating property from the Kabul residents, even automobiles. And there were many cases of rape reported, rumored to have been committed by Dostum’s troops.