The Taliban on Tuesday declared February 15 a national holiday to mark the anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan — six months after they stormed into Kabul to topple the US-backed government. After invading on Christmas Eve in 1979, the Red Army pulled out a decade later having lost nearly 15,000 troops fighting Western-backed Mujahideen forces, precipitating a civil war that gave rise to the Taliban and their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001. Forty years of conflict has left Afghanistan one of the world’s most impoverished nations, and the Taliban’s return on August 15 …