Of course, demographically Afghan Pashtuns are the majority ethnic in Afghanistan, but they are not dominant or sovereign ethnic group in the country either culturally or politically or financially or economically. Afghan Pashtuns without other Afghan ethnic groups lose their Afghan identity. They are, therefore, instinctively, as well as consciously, unwilling to give up their heroic and glorious past, their Afghan identity, the national Afghan culture and the common destiny they have achieved and build up in close association and cooperation with other Afghan social groups for adopting a visualized community of destiny with non-Afghan collectivities through confederation with Pakistan. Such community of destiny is not the alternative to that already and effectively attained by Afghans of different ethnic provenances. Hence, Afghans, including Afghan Pashtuns, have no option but to coexist among themselves while furthering the process of their mutual integration towards the completion of their distinctive civic identification based upon the coextensiveness and congruency of the Afghan state and the Afghan nation.
Islamic nationalism is illusory.
The experience of Egypt and Syria, of Egypt and Sudan, of Egypt and Yemen, of East and West Pakistan proved that the prospect for such nationalism is rather dim. Islamic countries are so different from one another and the interpretation of religion is diverging so widely from one another that no federation or confederation of unitary countries can be built upon it. In the opinion of all the Afghans I could consult the suggested confederation between Afghanistan and Pakistan is conceived neither for the benefit of Pashtuns nor for demonstrating the superiority of Islamic principles of nationalism. It is rather aimed at officializing and legalizing the domination of Pakistan over Afghanistan. It represents a new phase of the aftermath of the U.S. intervention into the Afghan War of Resistance against the former Soviet Union.