I never understood why the MONGOLS are always neglected. They owned Afghanistan for quite some time.
Sorry to distract from the main topic of this thread.
Perhaps we need a new thread.
To answer your question, not even mongols created a cohesive Afghanistan. The reason is really simple.
Afghanistan geography is unique.
It goes on as hills and valleys, hills and valleys.
That makes it difficult to move men and material in large numbers. This is why Afghanistan has remained lawless and refused to be governed even by Afghanis themselves let alone someone coming from outside.
However in 1985 things changed,
Afghani strength of geography became its biggest weakness.
So what happened in 1985?
Russians used a brand new weapon/technique never seen before in the entire history of Afghanistan.
This weapon/technique was ariborne elite troops with gunship heli support and an air cover of fighter bombers.
This new mode of war didn't need large convoys of troops winding through the valleys and thus picked upon by few Muj hiding high in the hill top.
Thus Russians would land the elite troops via helicopters in one valley, grab the trouble makers and were gone in no time.
Afghan geography then became a hindrance for the rag tag militias who could not get to the scene of action.
This was how, Russians in one year, eliminated the trouble makers and Afghan muj were on their last breath.
Americans realized this and they brought in a weapon to counter the latest technique used by Russians.
And we all know that weapon was called??????
Stingers! What else.
This allowed Afghan Muj to take away the very strength of Russian technique, and in a couple of years Russians ran away.
Many Pakistanis and many Taliboooies do not realize this, and they keep on beating this drum "Afghan the graveyard".
Fast forward to 2001. Americans used the same technique and wiped out Taliboobies in no time,
And Taliboobies had no answer and no stingers this time.
What they say, don't bite the hand that fed you in the past,
However Afghanistan was so broken that the military defeat of Taliboobies could not be replaced with civilian administration quickly.
And that allowed Taliboobies to regroup and restock and continue low level of insrugency from local places and from across the border in FATA.
Prez Obama made a HUGE mistake by doing the SURGE in Afghanistan. It was never needed. Had he studied the Afghan history, there is no need to send in 100s of 1000s of troops. Just 10 to 20,000 special ops, airborne troops and their support staff is needed.
That's all.
And this is where things are going back in 2014.
peace to you
... Soviet war was a whole different thing ...
