Answer:
Important outpost, gateway to East Asia
Step-by-step explanation:
The reason why so many countries want Afghanistan, or try to stop countries from getting Afghanistan, is because Afghanistan is basically a gateway to East Asia. If you get Afghanistan, you can just march east to China and Tibet, Go south for Pakistan ot India or just go basically in any direction to get any other Central-Asian nation. What's more, people think Afghanistan was kind of easy top conquer, their economy was not that good, and had not much of a military. These all made people want it more.