At dawn in Kabul, the road hums beneath the Hindu Kush, and the country feels exactly what it is: a landlocked crossroads between Central and South Asia. Afghanistan covers 652,864 square kilometres, with Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north, and China in the far northeast. Its population is estimated at between 35 and 50 million, most of them living under hard mountains and wide, dry plains.

People have lived here since the Middle Paleolithic era, and excavations show farming communities among the earliest in the world. Mundigak near Kandahar was a centre of the Helmand culture, and Shortugai on the Oxus River links ancient Afghanistan to the Indus Valley Civilisation. By 330 BCE Alexander the Great had marched through, and later the Maurya Empire, the Kushans, Arab Muslims and Mongols all left their mark. The land became known as a graveyard of empires, but also a source of empires, from the Greco-Bactrians to the Mughals.

The modern state took shape in the 18th century under Ahmad Shah Durrani, then became a buffer in the Great Game between Britain and Russia. Dost Mohammad Khan was recognised by the British in 1855, and the term Afghanistan became an official state name. After the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, Amanullah Khan won full independence at the Treaty of Rawalpindi, and in 1926 he proclaimed the Kingdom of Afghanistan. Mahmud Tarzi and Queen Soraya pushed reform, including compulsory elementary education in the 1923 constitution and the abolition of slavery.

Those reforms ran into fierce resistance. Amanullah’s move against the burqa and his co-educational schools helped trigger the Afghan Civil War of 1928 to 1929. He abdicated in January 1929, Habibullah Kalakani briefly took Kabul, and Mohammad Nadir Shah defeated him and was assassinated in 1933 by Abdul Khaliq. Zahir Shah then ruled from 1933 to 1973, while Mohammed Daoud Khan, his cousin, seized power in a bloodless coup and declared a republic in 1973.