The Soviet-Afghan War lasted from 1979. to 1989. and was fought in Central and Southern Asia in the state of Afghanistan. It began with an intervention of the Soviet military shortly after the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan seized power in the country. A primary goal of the Soviet armed formations was to stabilize the political situation in the country and to enable the ruling Afghan communist party unhampered governance. Traditional Afghan society rebelled at first against the government in Kabul and then they started an insurgency against the Soviet military. It was the beginning of the ten-year-long bloody war in Afghanistan. The Afghan resistance movement was composed of many mujaheddin factions that fought against the government in Kabul and the Soviet military, but also against each other in a struggle for power after the war. As the war was fought in the period of the Cold War it assumed much broader geopolitical importance. Consequently, it involved all world and regional powers, including the arch-enemy of the USSR, The United States of America. Assistance for the mujaheddin was provided mostly through Pakistan, which had a regional interest in appointing a government in Kabul which would be acceptable to them. In a somewhat lesser degree, the assistance was also provided via the People's Republic of China and the Islamic Republic of Iran, so it can be said that all neighbouring countries were involved in the war. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was involved in resolving the crisis by diplomatic means and its geopolitical importance was a result of its leading role in The Non-aligned Movement. The Soviet military was completely underprepared for long guerilla warfare and it found itself in a stalemate position with little chance of winning the war. Upon the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev as the new general secretary of the CPSU, the foreign policy of Moscow started to change and the Soviet leadership focused on exiting Afghanistan. The Soviet military finally withdrew from Afganistan at the beginning of 1989, but the war in the country continued to this day.