I lay my claim to the Pakistan area with actual orders/story/vision:
The Milnarid Empire
The Belmar people were once several pastoral peoples of the Iranian plateau who were supposedly spurred by the legendary king, Araad the Excellent, into a nigh-unstoppable horde that overwhelmed the simple farmer folk and urbanites of the Indus Valley, and later into the Gangetic plain. The short-lived Araadid Empire, a feudalistic enterprise by a military aristocracy predating on the poor farmers, would collapse into several petty chiefdoms by the death of Araad's son in the 17th century BCE.
The saamir, lit. the people who sow, referring not only to the farmer-serfs but also to the merchants and artisans who would not among the Belmar -- this would form the basis of a Samir identity later on, referring to the old natives of the Gangetic plain -- would find many opportunities to revolt against their Belmar masters, and by the 15th century BCE the Belmar petty kingdoms would be competing with the merchant republics of the west coast and the Samir petty kingdoms, where the natives would coopt the social structure of their "foreign" masters, who by then would be very well integrated culturally, and be concentrated in the east.
As time would go on, "Belmar" and "Samir" would increasingly become geographic as well as ethnic designations, between east and west, as the two sets of peoples grew and diverged, albeit from the common ancestry of the Belmar invaders and the old natives. Trade and industry became increasingly important among the Belmar people, while the Samir began to specialize in agriculture as they traded manufactured and imported goods with the Belmar. This increasing sophistication would supported by advances in technology.
The 10th century BCE would see great peace and prosperity among the petty kingdoms and the republics of the Gangetic plain and Indus Valley. Increasingly marginalized, however, would be the the northwestern Belmar, who came to be known as the Sverlit, who would have been renowned for their weaponcraft but would have lost importance as laws and courts became the battlefields of the day. They would try to specialize in grain, but would not be able to compete with the Samir of the east, and all that would be left to them would be their animals. That would lead to a degree of relative poverty and dissatisfaction.
This dissatisfaction would be leveraged by Milnar the Great in the 7th century BCE, who in his lifetime would call himself Araad II. He would unite the Sverlit peoples and subjugate the mercantile kingdoms and cities of the Belmar, and then proceed to unite the Gangetic plain under his empire. The many petty kingdoms would be dismantled and their leaders executed or otherwise absorbed into a central royal court and bureaucracy; laws would be standardized, as would be language, weights, measures, and currency. Though he would die before the completion of the roads, canals, and ports he would commission with the money looted from the coffers of the petty kings, his successors would see many of them through.
While traditionally feudal, especially in the agricultural eastern half of the empire, the old Belmar lands in the west would enjoy a tradition of relative freedom and mobility for the peasantry and city-folk. Also, in the destruction of his enemies and their old privileges, Milnar propped up a bureaucracy to govern the lands.
Starting with Emperor Milnar II, it would become conscious imperial policy to promote a sort of "Milnarid bottleneck" of trade between East and West. The Milnarids would launch punitive expeditions, not of conquest, against cities in southern India and the steppe pastoralists to the north to disrupt trade there and protect the primacy of the route along the Ganges, which they simply called the Dalkap, or Long River. Aside from the stick, they would of course use the carrot as well, promoting their route with canals, roads, and low tolls and tariffs, as it used to be in the western part of the empire.
Spiritually the people of the Dalkap would have some sort of Indo-European polytheistic mythology, similar to that of our own classical mythos, transmitted orally and inspiring epic poems and the construction of shrines and temples throughout the land, though no scripture will be laid out. The languages spoken throughout would be very similar, rooted in Indo-European, and would be reinforced by the official language of the government, which would later be adopted and evolve alongside the common trading tongue.
Please help me set up mine. 
But I put your Kurdistan start on there, as that's the most recent one you've said. A Hatti start would also be nice! That and another Mesopotamian, and maybe a Greek. But, anyone reading this, you can start anywhere. What I've expressed would just be covering all the bases, but you're all welcome to start where you please, of course.
