ility of The World Factbook and the CIA Web site.

I am using the Factbook online and it is not working. What is wrong?

Hundreds of "Factbook" look-alikes exist on the Internet. The
Factbook site at: www.cia.gov is the only official site.

When I attempt to download a PDF (Portable Document Format) map file
(or some other map) the file has no image. Can you fix this?

Some of the files on The World Factbook Web site are large and could
take several minutes to download on a dial-up connection. The screen
might be blank during the download process.

When I open a map on The World Factbook site, it is fuzzy or
granular, or too big or too small. Why?

Adjusting the resolution setting on your monitor should correct this
problem.

Is The World Factbook country data available in machine-readable
format? All I can find is HTML, but I'm looking for simple tabular
data.

The Factbook Web site now features "Rank Order" pages for selected
Factbook entries. "Rank Order" pages are available for those data
fields identified with a small bar chart icon located next to the
title of the data entry. In addition, all of the "Rank Order" pages
can be downloaded as tab-delimited data files that can be opened in
other applications such as spreadsheets and databases.

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@Afghanistan

Introduction
Afghanistan

Background:

Ahmad Shah DURRANI unified the Pashtun tribes and founded
Afghanistan in 1747. The country served as a buffer between the
British and Russian empires until it won independence from notional
British control in 1919. A brief experiment in democracy ended in a
1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union
invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist regime,
touching off a long and destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989
under relentless pressure by internationally supported
anti-Communist mujahedin rebels. A series of subsequent civil wars
saw Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hardline
Pakistani-sponsored movement that emerged in 1994 to end the
country's civil war and anarchy. Following the 11 September 2001
terrorist attacks in New York City, a US, Allied, and anti-Taliban
Northern Alliance military action toppled the Taliban for sheltering
Osama BIN LADIN. The UN-sponsored Bonn Conference in 2001
established a process for political reconstruction that included the
adoption of a new co