Honestly? Afghanistan&#x27;s a really difficult region to unify politically; it&#x27;s only happened a handful of times in history. On top of that, the global trend in the last ~100 years has been towards nationalism and away from consolidated, sprawling empires.  Due to the geography and ethnic composition of Afghanistan, it&#x27;s highly unlikely that the Soviets would have been able to do exercise much control over it in the long-run with any semblance of stability[0]. So I&#x27;d be very skeptical of the idea that it would have turned into anything resembling North Korea.<p>In all honesty, it would probably look relatively similar to what it does today. In that alternate universe, it wouldn&#x27;t necessarily be the Taliban itself that came to power, but the group that occupied that role would be similar in ideology and effect to the Taliban that exists in this universe.<p>[0] ignoring the pending collapse of the USSR, of course, but since this is all speculation anyway, we can take some liberties.