REEL HISTORY: Afghanistan is not the “graveyard of empires”. The phrase goes mainstream in 2001 via Milton Bearden’s Foreign Affairs headline, catchy, but fake history. And as Christian Caryl warned in 2010: if you want a way forward, “fake history” isn’t it. Because the land we now call Afghanistan has been governed, integrated, and culturally central for long stretches: Achaemenids → Seleucids → Parthians → Sasanians → Kushans → Samanids → Ghaznavids → Timurids. So we need to stop using colonial terms to describe ourselves and our lands. #history #afghanistan #empire #islamic #persian