> Let's take the upper end of estimates for the tajikistani civil war: 150'000 dead, as a benchmark. That'd still be better than 2'000'000 for the Soviet-Afghan war and another 200'000 for the US-Afghan war?)

2.5% of the Tajik population died during the civil war, and it absolutely would have spread to Afghanistan, as 20% of Afghans are Tajik.

> I sometimes wonder what the world might have been like if the USSR had occupied afghanistan in the early 1980s

Afghanistan would have anyhow fallen into civil war even if Najibullah remained in power because Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Turkiye, Iran, Saudi, UAE, Qatar, and other regional powers all meddle there.

There's a reason most of Najibullah's and Massood's family live in New Delhi and not Moscow or NoVA.

Thanks; much I had not known before.

(but 2.5% of 12,5 million is still only <320'000. I guess the tajiks didn't have MANPADs, but in this scenario neither would the afghans)

How much did the USSR and US spend on their two wars? What if that amount had been invested in regional development? Or would that also have been a non-starter?

(why is everyone meddling there, anyway? it doesn't exactly seem to be on the way to anywhere. China-Arabian Sea doesn't go through it, and china-russia [Novosibirsk?] doesn't either. Is iran a big enough trading partner [and is there sufficient transport capacity through xinjiang?] that china-iran would be worthwhile? more worthwhile than just going to Bandar Abbas like everyone else?)

> but in this scenario neither would the afghans

One of the countries listed would have ended up sending them anyhow.

> why is everyone meddling there, anyway

The same reason Russia meddles in Ukraine and Belarus - for these countries it's their near abroad.

For Pakistan and India, majority of Pakhtuns actually live in Pakistan, and the 3rd largest diaspora is in India, and Kabul used to be the Mughal capital for much of it's history, and there is a lot of cultural and economic relations between both countries and Afghanistan (there's a reason most Afghan politicians - Taliban and resistance - studied in Pakistan or India, and have family and assets there)

For Iran, a similar story - Herat was the primary Persian city in Khorasan for much of their history, and multiple Safavid-Mughal wars were fought over Kandahar.

China entered the region in the 1700s when the Qing Dynasty began their expansion into Central Asia (eg. The Dzungar Genocide - who's survivors founded Kalmykia), and multiple wars were faught between the Mughals, Safavid, Qing, Uzbeks, and Sikhs over Central Asia. In more recent history, a lot of the militancy in East Turkestan was sparked from Uyghurs (eg. Baren Uprising) supported by their Afghan Uzbek brethren.

Turkey was always a major defense partner of Afghanistan (as a kingdom, under the Taliban, the US, and today) due to a mix of Pan-Turkism (Uzbeks), Pan-Islamism, and the large Afghan and Pakistani diaspora living in Turkey.

The Gulf states are significant players as well because Pakhtuns, Balochs, Tajiks, and Uzbeks make up significant minorities in those countries, and Gulf states are stuck in great power conflicts with each other and with Turkey, India, Pakistan, etc.

The Russians only entered Central Asia and the Caucasus in the late 19th century, and their presence was always minimal, like the French in Algeria (look at how many are left after 1991), and memories of them are very bitter (eg. Circassian Genocide, Chechen War a la Tolstoy, the Uzbek campaigns, dekulakization of nomadic herders, etc)

The Caucasus was always a borderland between the Safavids and Ottomans, and Afghanistan+Central Asia was a borderland between the Qing, Safavids, Mughals, and Ottomans (who supported the Uzbeks)

> How much did the USSR and US spend on their two wars

The USSR spent high double figures of GDP %age on military spending in Afghanistan, but the US's spending was minimal.

> for these countries it's their near abroad

How about this idea: take a page from the 1815 Congress of Vienna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Vienna#Later_criti...

There were grand plans for post-Napoleonic Europe, and some of them didn't work out so well (did the supplement banning the international slave trade inspire a regional power in the other hemisphere to declare the Monroe Doctrine?), but some of them are still going to this day.

In particular, faced with which of the major powers should control the alpine passes, a very Solomonic decision was taken: none[0] of them.

I'm not sure if the afghans could manage a multi-confessional multi-cultural democracy[1], but I am pretty sure they'd be happy to do armed neutrality.

EDIT: Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fNW8OrEsn0

[0] there's a Nasruddin story in which he and his son try all four possible configurations of who rides the donkey and who walks, each time facing passersby with complaints, only to come to the conclusion that you can't simultaneously please everyone. I submit that the configuration in which no regional power has much control over a flashpoint may be more stable than the configuration in which all regional powers have some control.

[1] on the one hand, in one of the Retief stories the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne arrives on some planet and no sooner has the delegation explained the principle of "one three-eyed green thing, one vote" than the local Wise Offworld Gentlemen immediately derive a corollary: one less three-eyed green thing, one less vote.

On the other hand, I note that when I watch buzkashi, it seems that, for a sport which in principle is every man for himself, in practice the young guys in their 30s with excellent horses ride such that the old guys in their 50s with easy horses win the matches — a clear testimony for the ability and habit of horsetrading required to come to mutually beneficial arrangements?