Map Reprinted from http://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/afgh02-05enl.html

The people in Kandahar built some of those huge standing buddhas that the Taliban blew up. The Greco-Bactrian area of Afghanistan became one of the strongest centers of Buddhism until it fell to Arab Armies in the late 600s. This was the missionary base through which Tibet, Mongolia and China were converted. Greek seems to have died out around the year zero, but the empires kept the Greek statuary traditions and perhaps more. Aramaic was the state language of Afghanistan when Alexander the Great invaded around 300 BC. The so-called Persian empire could also be called the Aramaic Empire in that it created an Aramaic cultural region including Egypt and Afghanistan. This cultural region developed into the Greek-speaking, Hellenistic cultural region.