PC: Afghan great power?

With a PoD in 1900, is there a chance that Afghanistan can become at least a significant player in Asian politics like India or Japan, ie it's not necessarily a leading player but still has enough power to influence other countries in the region and have a fairly prosperous society, with a significant happy middle class population etc.
 
Russia becomes a constitutional monarchy and united India gets independence in an alt WWI.
With 2 (3 with Iran) great peaceful powers on its border trading and competing for its support, but both still peacefully Afghan benefits enormously over OTL?
 

Zachariah

Banned
With a POD in or after 1900? Man, that's going to be incredibly difficult. But let's give it a try anyway. And for starters, as a potential POD, how about having the Afghan-backed Basmachi movement garner more official support from Afghanistan? Instead of merely supplying them with arms and offering them refuge for a brief period, as they did IOTL (due largely to the murder of King Habibullah Kalakani, their most vocal and enthusiastic ally, after only 9 months on the throne throwing a spanner in the works), the Afghans send their own military forces across the border to intervene in this conflict directly (with the approval and financing of this effort by the British from behind the scenes) after the October Revolution and the fall of the Russian Empire to the Soviets. This results in the Afghans eventually emerging victorious against the Tashkent Soviet and the newborn Red Army, and securing the independence of the majority of formerly Russian Turkestan, along with the Emirate of Bukhara and Khanate of Khiva, under the Afghans' military leadership by the mid-20's?

Then, when the Kumul Rebellion kicks off in the early 30's ITTL, the Afghans intervene here as well, just as they did IOTL, but through direct military action here as well; they're the first to officially recognize the First East Turkestan Republic as an independent nation, and after Turkestan, Bukhara and Khiva follow suit, they manage to persuade the British, Iranians and Turks to give East Turkestan official recognition as well. As such, the Kumul Rebellion is also successful, also courtesy of the Afghans, with East Turkestan (better known as Xinjiang today) also joining Afghanistan's own established regional military alliance. And thus, by the early 1930's, King Habibullah's Afghanistan has become the undisputed 'Great Power' of Central Asia. Along with the Afghan 'mujahideen' having come into existence a full fifty years earlier ITTL than IOTL, with the Soviets as their deadly adversaries, and the Western World as their greatest allies on the world stage. How would things pan out in the end? No idea. But wouldn't it be fun to see how they did?
 
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Unless Afghanistan made serious advances in its culture, military and overall significance, I don't really see it having any potential to be a great power, even in the early 1900s. True, Afghanistan was fairly better off back then than it is now and it held a strategic location between the British Empire, Russian Empire and Xinjiang (which as formerly part of the Qing Dynasty). But it didn't have much going for it and was practically unheard of the majority of the world (to my knowledge at least) until the Soviet Union fought with Afghanistan in 1979. Other than making critical reforms/enhances to the overall country, the only other way I can see a 'great' Afghanistan (between 1900 and 1950) was if it battled Persia and won. Then we could see a whole new perspective on Afghanistan's capabilities. Persia, while far degraded from its glorious days of the Persian Empire, still did have a degree of high significance in the Middle East because of its history and grand supplies of oil. If Afghanistan defeated Persia back then, it would been the final nail in the coffin of Persia's legacy and the beginning of a new era for Afghanistan. But Xinjiang's climate would have been impossible for Afghan troops to occupy without heavy causalities and by then Xinjiang would have put up a defense that the weakened Afghans couldn't handle. And war against Russia or Britain would have been suicide for Afghanistan (at least if the Afghans were launching an offensive war against either). So chances of Afghanistan being a great power, even back then, is rather limited. It's not impossible, but it will not be an easy feat.
 
Having been to Afghanistan and studied the region, culture, and history, I can say quite confidently that there is no way short of nuclear annihilation of almost every other country or a POD 4 or 5 centuries ago that they could ever be any sort of major power.

At best, they could be a good supporting cast...
 
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Having been to Afghanistan and studied the region, culture, and history, I can say quite confidently that there is no way short of nuclear annihilation of almost every other country or a POD 4 or 5 centuries ago that they could ever be any sort of major power.

At best, they could be a good supporting cast...

Not to be rude, but could you say why that is? Pronouncements from an educated source are good, pronouncements that help me become more educated too are better.
 
To small, to poor and bad geography?
- to small to support a great power population
- starting from to low economy by 1900
- very bad geography with bad transport links and to many mountains etc

Its like asking Switzerland to be the great power in Europe, only worse.
 
Other than some of the major cities, the country is just too remote. The type of Nationalism or sense of any real community necessary for a nation to evolve into a great power are absent. This is due to the harsh geography, and the nomadic nature of most Afghans' existence. If you were able to have an early POD in which the culture could evolve extremely quickly, you might have something.

Just from my personal experience, the only places where the concept of "Afghanistan" even existed were in Kabul and Jalalabad. Get more than a few miles out and things tend to be more tribal.
 
I feel like permanently acquiring Baluchistan would help, but that encounters the 1. "What is Afghanistan?" problem hinted at by JCR above me, and 2. That's almost certainly a 19C or earlier POD
 
Honestly I'd put Afghanistan's best shot at being a great power as being within the next fifty or so years as a kind of regional intermediary and trade center. It's always struck me that Kabul could very reasonably beocme a major global trade center, between having effectively two major airports (Bagram's a BIT of a stretch but it's definitely the same region), the potential to link up the Indian and Russian railways with a single break of gauge and Wakhan corridor having a lot of potential for east/west trade if China would cooperate in it's commercialization. As far as POD's go, it would probably help if Soviet intervention were easier and more effective so there would be better infrastructure in place earlier, but a lot of the stuff required for this is happening right now and really hinges on how stable things are in the next few years. If they could somehow have ended up mashed together with Tajikistan when the USSR breaks up there would certainly be fewer complications, but really the most important thing is always going to be improving relations with China to allow the land border to be opened up.

Realistically the priorities of any Afghan government should, imo, be
  • Maintaining enough stability, by whatever means, to allow infrastructure development
  • Transport infrastructure, especially rail links to Tajikistan, Pakistan, Iran and China
  • Hydro electric development in support of the above and ensuring cheap reliable power and telecoms in Kabul itself
  • Subsidizing the hell out of Ariana or whatever chosen national airline - ala a discount version of Emirates. I'm thinking a fleet of A330 NEOs with an emphasis on being a link between Asia and Africa, markets more or less undeserved and where low cost is going to be everything.
The biggest difficulty really is going to be stability of course, doubly so with a plan that is going to piss off a lot of the country between the inevitable foreign influence and it's being hugely Kabul centric.
 
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