Russia on Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan haunted by its catastrophic war against Islamists and convinced the trauma harbours lessons for Western forces today. On February 15, 1989 the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan, ending a war that Moscow initially saw as a brief incursion to bolster its Afghan supporters but became a protracted and bloody struggle that lasted almost 10 years. The war, which cost over 13,000 Soviet lives and may have killed as many as one million Afghans, led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Islamist Taliban.