The thousands of years that Afghanistan has existed as a "crossroads of empire" - with the corollary of "graveyard of empires" that that position implies - tells us as much about the surrounding histories and geographies as it does about the history and geography internal to the region itself. However transformed in the modern age, we can still make out a Persia to the West, an India to the South, and a China to the East, just as we can make out an irascible and unconquerable Afghanistan itself, all with their own historical characters persisting through time.
There is something not only in the geography and corresponding culture, but also a historical accumulation in which the great empires, through their cyclical rising and falling, fall back upon themselves and break upon their respective high watermarks, only to rise again upon the deep tracks of development they carved into the world system.
This is something you can also see internal to a given empire: a great city may have been founded in some strategic geographic location, all of the way back in the ancient world, which persisted through various razings and sackings and natural disasters, continuously rebuilt and restored, through a combination of persisting infrastructure and human activity in the region, and that age-old instinct for continuity and reverence for symbol. Old cities like London and Constantinople (now Istanbul) come to mind.
The concentrated energy of the hegemon may slosh to and fro across the inhospitable surfaces of the crossroads, but the given hegemon du jour leaves its own marks upon the accumulated graveyard today. At least until the greater climatic paradigm changes and wipes the board clean once again.
