I suspect many foreigners used the ubiquitous Afghan tricolor ribbon on things to which it didn't belong, simply because it was available. This has certerinly been done into the 1980s, at least. Earlier, so little information was available on Afghanm awards (for example to the British) that it was general policy in the 19th century just to let recipients use whatever ribbons they wished for Afghan awards (especially since the wearing permission was usually tightly regulated for these awards and there were few legitimate wearers of Afghan awards -- not everyone that was given an award would be premitted to wear it under all circumstances). Moreover, I think we here (as elsewhere) risk making a tremedous error in expecting too much scientific standardization in the colors used with ribbons from any place (at least until the post-WWII period, and maybe later that that). Color quality could and would vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and from batch to batch and often you just got as close as you could or, if that wasn't poissible, used whatever was at hand. This really isn't rocket science, never was.