Afghanistan’s president Mohammed Najibullah (C) reviews 17 October 1986, along with Red Army and Afghan soldiers in downtown Kabul Soviet army soldiers marching during a military parade. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to shore up the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul and maintained more than 100,000 troops in the country until completing their phased withdrawal in 1989. Najibullah who became president in 1986, was hanged in a street 27 September 1996 near the UN compound in Kabul where he had sought sanctuary since April 1992 when mujahedeen guerrillas entered Afghan capital.