Nation-state is an European invention of the 19th century nationalism, in areas of rather unified language, race and religion. I am certain that as far as just about all Afghans are concerned, they never think of themselves as Afghans. I wonder what word is used to say "Afghan" in their local languages. They probably see themselves as this-tribe living in this mountain, and that-tribe living on that mountain. And that tribe is in Kabul, but the tribal territory is only around Kabul. Elsewhere is the territory of other tribes. I think only on Euro-US-thinking is there a country called Afghanistan with the borders, and everyone in there thinking himself an Afghan, like how New York city has a definite border and everyone there think themselves New Yorkers.

In an area that never had (much of) centralized rule, or people even thinking themselves the same people, anyone ever thought of looking at how it was done in the past several thousand years, and maybe make something like the Iroquois Confederation or the Aetolian League? Of course it'd be more like the former, the latter having had a rather different level of generalized education and civic virtue. A 'dictator' can only happen in a somewhat industrialized nation-state where people at least think themselves as part of a country, rather than thinking of the capital city as the territory of a tribe owing that one city. Also, not to deliberately sound shocking, but looking at how Persia did the satrapy system would be good as well. Even Alexander, having overrun the Persian Empire, did not enforce the central rule and identity upon the various satrapies. He either left the existing Persian satraps in place or appointed new ones, but did not try to homogenize the Persian Empire.

And, it would be good to ask a college professor (Near Eastern Studies, History, plus Anthropology), and not the CIA about this, or any other secret-society-cults.