Ephemera on Twentieth-Century Iranian, Iraqi, and Afghani Political Resistance

1968-2004

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (1919-1980), reigned from 1941 to 1979 before being removed during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian Students Association in the United States (ISAUS) was a student group formed in 1952 with the support of the Iranian embassy. In the 1960s the ISAUS transformed into a protest group in opposition to the Shah, staging protests across the United States. The group dissolved in the early 1980s after the Iranian Revolution.

The Soviet-Afghan War lasted from 1979 to 1989 between the Soviet Union, in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, and the Afghan mujahideen. The Afghan Support Committee was an anti-Soviet Marxist-Leninist group based in Andover, Connecticut who relayed messages and reports from observers and anti-Soviet militants in Afghanistan.

The Gulf War lasted from 1990 to 1991 between Iraq and a coalition of nations led by the United States. The war sparked criticism of media coverage of the event. Arch D. Bunker was an anonymous art collective founded in San Francisco in the 1980s. An extension of the anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist magazine, Processed World, the collective mobilized during the Gulf War to produce work critical of the 24-hour news cycle, coverage of the war, and the rhetoric of politicians, pundits, and arms dealers.

The United States invasion of Afghanistan occurred in 2001 as a reaction to the September 11th attacks. The invasion lead to the decades-long War in Afghanistan (2001-2021) which resulted in the toppling of the Taliban-controlled regime and the creation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.