The following is one of my favourite short sections from an ancient source, because it teaches a valuable lesson about thinking historically. It is from a Chinese text called the Han Shu, from chapter 96, an account of far flung regions in Central Asia beyond China's control, primarily deriving from a diplomatic mission in the late 2nd century BC (though the text was probably written in the late 1st century AD). The author is describing how a tribal confederation known as the Yuezhi had conquered and divided up Ta-hsia, a region which corresponds roughly with modern Afghanistan (and which was known in the west as Bactria at the time). And it reads (this is from a translation of extracts by Zurcher in 1968, but there are no shortage of translations of the relevant section):

"Ta-hsia originally had no great kings or heads, but everywhere in their walled cities and settlements they had installed small heads. The people are weak and fear war, therefore when the Yueh-chi came migrating (to the West) they completely subdued and tamed them."

This description is completely at odds with our understanding of Afghanistan today. And as we go further into ancient sources that becomes ever more pronounced. The region was sometimes regarded as wealthy, populous, a centre of artistic production or learning. The lesson is this, that a historical framing understands the past in terms of its own context not by imposing our context on to it. Today it seems easy to say that 'for centuries empires have taken an immense interest in Afghanistan' and to describe the region as 'a rather unspectacular and unorganized piece of land' but both of those are ideas derived not from a knowledge of Afghanistan's history but from assumptions about contemporary geo-politics.

Let us take the first part of your question. That large powers have shown a strong interest in Afghanistan. Is this really true? And the answer is no, because it is a relative statement, it presupposes that large powers have shown more interest in Afghanistan than they have, for example, in North Africa, Goa, or Korea. In practice we are essentially talking about three conflicts in the last half-millenia, the contests between Safavid Persia and Mughal north India, between imperial Russia and the British Empire (the 'Great Game'), and the United States current involvement. Is three such conflicts really an exceptional number? And of those three most are not really about Afghanistan at all, they are simply a function of the country falling in a border region for two larger powers (Saffavid/Mughal or Russian/British) or instability making it a refuge for other groups. Each of those conflicts has its own specific roots and so I wouldn't want to speak more broadly about them (I note you already have an answer relating to the 19th century conflict between Britian and Russia).

Now, let’s consider the second part of your question…

Is there something inherent in the land we refer to as Afghanistan – its geography or position – that would lend itself to being the focus of imperial attention? The question as to what extent geography affects historical processes is a vexed one. However, I will direct you to a single piece of work on this – Barfield, T. ‘Afghan Political Ecologies: Templates Past and Present from the Eastern Iranian World’ in Payne, R.E. King, R. (eds.) The Limits of Empire in Ancient Afghanistan, 2020, 1-20. Barfield argues that the complex highland geography of the region made it very hard to supplant local elites, and this made it necessary for imperial formations to court rather than simply remove a wide variety of groups. This how he describes it:

‘Rulers have always found the incorporation of such distinct territories and peoples challenging. Local elites have historically proven almost impossible to displace and had to be accommodated or co-opted to maintain political stability. One reason for such strong local cohesion was that it emerged in relative isolation since regions were separated from each other by large tracts of unpopulated deserts, mountains, or steppes.’ (p.2)

Barfield is not deterministic in his assessment but you might find it (and the volume in general – no I don’t get royalties for my contribution) an interesting place to start if you are interested in how the geography of Afghanistan and has impacted its history and geo-political position in the longue duree, and also the degree to which at different points in time it was often the site of spectacular and well organised polities.

Greetings! This is an interesting question which, as OP has pointed out, spans various time periods and empires. This response shall be focussing on perhaps the most drawn out of those geopolitical squabbles over Afghanistan: The "Great Game" of the mid-19th century between Czarist Russia and the British Empire. Should any other AH travelers have the knowledge to comment on the other empires and national polities which have attempted to influence Afghanistan, by all means feel free to type up your own mini-narratives on the matter. Let's begin.

Funeral Parlour for Kings

"Afghanistan is where empires go to die. Or, at the very least, to receive a terrible beating."

- Historian and television presenter Dan Snow, remarking on the British retreat from Kabul in 1842.

The quote above is certainly a rather bold one, and it is a subtle reference to an epithet that Afghanistan has gained as a result of its significance with what OP has alluded to in their question: "The Graveyard of Empires". This is a statement which is, it must be said, too bold, and incredibly reductionist towards the litany of factors, events, figures, and decisions which caused Afghanistan to become a key interest in some of the most pre-eminent powers throughout the centuries (including Alexander the Great's Macedon, the Soviet Union, and most recently the United States).

This response however, focuses on a period when Afghanistan was the center of attention for two of Europe's most powerful nations. On the one side, the maritime empire of Great Britain, with her seemingly invincible navy and vast economic-industrial wealth. On the other, the land behemoth of imperial Russia, the largest contiguous empire at the time, and a rising threat to Britannia in the region. From the period of around 1830 and leading into the early 20th century, the two empires were at loggerheads in the region of Central Asia.

What motivated these two powers to shift their interests towards Afghanistan, and why was there such antagonism between them in the region as a whole? For the British, their main concern was imperial security, which in Central Asia was tied directly with the "Eastern Question" of geopolitics: how best to maintain British control over the Indian subcontinent without provoking confrontation with local (or indeed foreign) rivals. In this light, British politicians for much of the 19th century viewed Imperial Russia as the threat to their empire in Central Asia. In the 1820s Russia had begun expanding downwards into the Back Sea and into dangerous orbit with the Ottoman Empire (then referred to colloquially as the "Sublime Porte" after the main government offices in Constantinople). The British feared that the Ottoman Empire's weakening grip over its Eastern European provinces in the Balkans and the open rebellion of its Arab regions (sparked after viceroy Mehmet Ali's revolt in Egypt) would give Russia the means to expand further into the Levant and control Anatolia. This was an unacceptable eventuality, as that meant Russia would exert massive (if not the most) influence over Persia, the eastern Mediterranean, and directly threaten the Suez canal. Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston described these fears aptly in 1835:

"I take [Tsar] Nicholas [I] to be ambitious, bent upon great schemes, determined to make extensive additions to his dominions and, animated by the same hatred to England which was felt by Napoleon."

Palmerston, echoing a fear shared by many of Britain's imperial agents, feared that Russian encroachment into Central Asia would inevitably lead to conflict over the British Raj, threatening that "jewel in the crown of the Empire". To that end, the British sought to ensure that Russia's influence in Central Asia was limited (or even rolled back) from places such as Afghanistan and Persia. As Palmerston himself rhetorically phrased it:

"Sooner or later, the Cossack and the Sepoy [Indian soldier serving under Britain], the man from the Baltic and he from the British islands will meet in the centre of Asia. It should be our business to make sure that the meeting is as far off from our Indian possessions as may be convenient."

Russia, for its part, was indeed a rising power in the region. It had conducted a series of violent expansion campaigns eastwards after the Napoleonic Wars had drawn to a close, and in 1828 the Russo-Persian War had ended with a resounding victory for Russia, and the peace settlement had ensured that it was the ascendant power in the Caucasus region. For some Russian intellectuals and political advisers, Asia represented a sprawling landmass teeming with opportunities for Russian expansion (militarily, politically, and economically). Yet for all these expansionist moves, the British did not initially view the Russians as threatening their position in India, it was only after the campaigns of the 1820s that London began to worry about St. Petersburg's ambitions in Central Asia.

Why was this the case? Geographically speaking, Afghanistan in the 1800s was by no means a particularly resource-rich or lucrative bit of territory (this would all change with the discovery of oil in the 1900s), and it is not exactly a particularly welcoming place to conquer or control. However, this ignores several critical considerations within the wider geopolitical context. Firstly, Afghanistan was a crucial trade route between Central Asia and the Middle East (then mostly under Ottoman rule). Secondly, Afghanistan was (if little else) a useful "buffer state" of sorts which prevented the Persian or Ottoman Empires to the west of India from attempting to foment insurrection against the British there. Alongside these concerns, there were also several others which were not exclusive to Afghanistan, yet all of them culminated in Afghanistan being the "pivot" upon which British security in Central Asia (or at least in the view of British politicians) rested upon. David Fromkin, an American historian with expertise in Middle Eastern affairs, lists the other reasons for British concerns:

"Britain, then, by the middle of the nineteenth century had at least nine reasons for opposing the continuing Russian expansion in Asia: (1) it would upset the balance of power by making Russia stronger than the other European powers; (2) it would culminate in a Russian invasion of British India; (3) it would encourage India to revolt against Britain; (4) it would cause the Islamic regimes of Asia to collapse, which in turn would lead to the outbreak of a general war between the European powers in order to determine which of them would get what share of the valuable spoils; (5) it would strengthen a country and a regime that were the chief enemies of popular political freedom in the world; (6) it would strengthen a people whom Britons hated; (7) it threatened to disrupt the profitable British trade with Asia; (8) it would strengthen the sort of protectionist, closed economic society which free-trading Britain morally disapproved of; and (9) it would threaten the line of naval communications upon which Britain's commercial and political position in the world depended."

Afghanistan then, was not the sole theater of operations in this "proto-Cold War" of the 19th century if you will. The British and the Russians clashed politically and militarily over neighbouring polities as well, most notably over Ottoman holdings in the Crimea during the Crimean War of 1853-1856 (in which Britain prevailed, and Russian ambitions in the region were checked). With the Persian Empire, Britain fared much worse, and had to accept that Russian hegemony over this part of Asia was all but secured by the middle of the 1800s.

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