I run the RISK side-game for the /r/civ AI battle royale, and over and over again the whole community has been asking about the portrayal of Afgahnistan in the board game RISK.
The actual modern day Afghanistan is contained for the most part in what is considered India on the RISK board, and I haven't been able to find a reason for this. Is there any historical accuracy to these odd Afghani borders, or is this simply more colonialist (board game) powers redrawing maps based on little or no information?
It's also worth noting that different versions of RISK have different game boards - a quick google search will find at least 4 different versions - with many variations in that particular area of the map. On most of the boards I've seen Afghanistan contains the 5 ex-soviet "stans", which is probably just a product of simplifying geography as the board game does in many other areas. Keep in mind other areas on Risk boards are notoriously inaccurate - i.e.: Brazil taking up most of South America, "Ontario" reaching into the US and taking over Chicago, Buffalo, etc. I would just chock it up to general inaccuracy with your board example just being the most inaccurate. As for historical accuracy, there are periods in time when Afghanistan was much larger maps maybe closer to other RISK map versions, but none that are similar to your particular version...
