Known as the “graveyard of empires,” what makes Afghanistan the toughest region to conquer?

No one has ever considered Afghanistan to be the graveyard of Empires until recently. Afghanistan has been controlled, in at least some form, by these following empires:

Kushan Empire

Ghazanvid Empire

Seljuk Empire

Khwarezmian Empire

Sassanid Empire

Umayyad Empire

Mughal Empire

and so many more

The fact is, it’s not hard to conquer Afghanistan, it’s hard to hold on to it. What people popularly perceive as the main protection from conquest, its insane amount of mountains, is actually what keeps it from being integrated and controlled in modern times.

In times before, when the aforementioned empires existed, they were not centralized nation-states ruled by a bureaucracy, instead they were particularly decentralized, with vassal rulers lording over territories, left to their devices outside of tribute of money and men to the suzerain of the empire.

The idea of ‘Graveyard of Empires’ is a recent innovation, established by nations such as the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States, who were unable to effectively consolidate control of Afghanistan. This is because of the mountains. Due to mind-boggling amount of Afghanistan that is mountainous, construction of infrastructure that would connect to one centralized authority in the region is near untenable. It’s difficult to siege out an army in these mountains, now imagine trying to build power lines and radio stations while they attack you from the other mountain. That is why Afghanistan is ‘The Graveyard of Modern Empires’.

Tl;DR Afghanistan was a part of many empires in a decentralized governance, but in modern day, attempts to centrally control Afghanistan is near impossible, therefore leading to the failure of the Soviet, British, and USA occupations.