Ethnic groups in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a multiethnic and mostly tribal society. The population of the country consists of numerous ethnolinguistic groups: mainly the Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek, as well as the minorities of Aimaq, Turkmen, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjar, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Moghol, and others. Altogether they make up the Afghan people.
The former Afghan National Anthem and the Afghan Constitution (before 2021) each mention fourteen of them.
The term "Afghan" is synonymous with the ethnonym "Pashtun", but in modern times the term became the national identity of the people, who live in Afghanistan.
The national culture of Afghanistan is not uniform, at the same time, the various ethnic groups have no clear boundaries between each other and there is much overlap. Additionally, ethnic groups are not racially homogenous. Ethnic groups in Afghanistan have adopted traditions and celebrations from each other and all share a similar culture. For example, Nauruz is a New Year festival celebrated by various ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
The Pashtuns make up the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. The exact numbers vary; according to the Library of Congress Country Studies' estimate of 1996, Pashtuns made up 40%, while some other estimates from around the 2000s say they make up around 60% of Afghanistan's population. More recent estimates vary between 42% in 2013 and 52.4% in 2023. The majority of Pashtuns practice Sunni Islam. After the rise of the Hotaki dynasty in 1709 and the Durrani Empire in 1747, Pashtuns expanded by forming communities in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There are conflicting theories about the origin of the Pashtun people, both among historians and the Pashtun themselves. A variety of ancient groups with eponyms similar to Pukhtun have been hypothesized as possible ancestors of modern Pashtuns. Since the 3rd century AD and onward they are mostly referred to by the ethnonym "Afghan", a name believed to be given to them by neighboring Persian people. Some believe that ethnic Afghan is an adaptation of the Prakrit ethnonym Avagana, attested in the 6th century CE. It was used to refer to a common legendary ancestor known as "Afghana", asserted to be grandson of King Saul of Israel.
The Tajiks are a Persian-speaking ethnic group. Historically, Tajiks were not and as of 2022 still widely are not considered to be a distinct ethnic group but rather a collection of several sedentary Sunni Muslims who spoke a Persian dialect as their mother tongue. The Tajiks usually refer to themselves by the region, province, city, town, or village that they are from rather than by tribes, for example: Badakhshi, Baghlani, Mazari, Panjsheri, Kabuli, Herati, Kohistani, etc. Alternative names for the Tajiks are Fārsīwān (Persian-speaker) and historically Dīhgān (cf. Tajik: Деҳқон, romanized: Dehqon, literally "farmer or settled villager", in a wider sense "settled" in contrast to "nomadic"). Tajiks are mainly descended from Bactrians and Sogdians, and are native to Northern Afghanistan, as they have continually inhabited the region for many millennia.
Tajiks are considered the second-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. While it is estimated that they make up about 37% of the population of Afghanistan in 2019; they made up 25.3% of Afghanistan's population in 1996, and the Encyclopædia Britannica explains that by the early 21st century they constituted about one-fifth (i. e. 20%) of the population. It is important to note that all of these numbers are unreliable as there is no official census in Afghanistan.
The Hazaras are one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan and a principal component to their population. They reside in all parts of Afghanistan, mainly in the Hazarajat region in central Afghanistan. Linguistically the Hazaras speak the Dari and Hazaragi dialects of the Persian language. Dari is the official language of Afghanistan and Hazaragi is closely related to Dari. They practice Islam, mostly Shi'a, with a significant Sunni minority, and some Isma'ili. According to Library of Congress Country Studies in 1996, Hazaras made up 18% of country's population.
Some notable Hazaras of Afghanistan include: Abdul Ali Mazari, Commander Shafi Hazara, Sadiqi Nili, Ismael Balkhi, Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, Sultan Ali Keshtmand, Abdul Wahed Sarābi, Karim Khalili, Habiba Sarābi, Sarwar Danish, Sima Samar, Ramazan Bashardost, Muhammad Arif Shah Jahan, Abdul Haq Shafaq, Sayed Anwar Rahmati, Qurban Ali Urozgani, Azra Jafari, Ahmad Shah Ramazan, Muhammad Mohaqiq, Ahmad Behzad, Nasrullah Sadiqi Zada Nili, Abbas Noyan, Fahim Hashimi, Rohullah Nikpai, Hamid Rahimi, Mohammad Ebrahim Khedri, Wakil Hussain Allahdad, and Dawood Sarkhosh.
The Uzbeks are one of the main Turkic ethnic group in Afghanistan, whose native territory is in the northern regions of the country. Most likely the Uzbeks migrated with a wave of Turkic invaders and intermingled with local Iranic tribes over time to become the ethnic group they are today. The Uzbeks of Afghanistan are predominantly Sunni Muslims and fluent in Southern Uzbek. Uzbeks living in Afghanistan were estimated in the 1990s at approximately 1.3 million but are believed to be 2 million in 2011.
Some notable Uzbeks of Afghanistan include: Azad Beg, Alhaj Mutalib Baig, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Suraya Dalil, Husn Banu Ghazanfar, Delbar Nazari, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, Muhammad Yunus Nawandish, Sherkhan Farnood, Abdul Majid Rouzi, Rasul Pahlawan, and Abdul Malik Pahlawan.
The Aimaqs, Aimaq meaning "tribe" or "group of tribes" in Turkic-Mongolic (Oymaq), is not an ethnic denomination, but differentiates semi-nomadic herders and agricultural tribal groups of various ethnic origins including the Hazara, Tajik, and others, that were formed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They live among non-tribal people in the central and western highlands of Afghanistan, especially in Badghis, Ghor, and Herat provinces. They practice Sunni Islam, speak the Dari and Aimaqi dialects of Persian, and refer to themselves with tribal designations.
The Turkmens are a smaller Turkic-speaking ethnic group in Afghanistan. They are predominantly Sunni Muslims, and their origins are similar to that of the Uzbeks. Unlike the Uzbeks, however, the Turkmens are traditionally a nomadic people (though they were forced to abandon this way of life in Turkmenistan itself under Soviet rule). In the 1990s their number was put at around 200,000.
The Baloch people are speakers of the Balochi language who are mostly found in and around the Balochistan region of Afghanistan. In the 1990s their number figure was put at 100,000 but they are around 200,000 today. Mainly pastoral and desert dwellers, the Baloch people of Afghanistan are predominantly Sunni Muslims. Abdul Karim Brahui the former Governor of Nimruz province, is an ethnic Baloch.
The Pashayi are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group living primarily in eastern Afghanistan. They are mainly concentrated in the northern parts of Laghman and Nangarhar, also parts of Kunar, Kapisa, Parwan, Nuristan, and a bit of Panjshir. Their total population is estimated to be 400,000.
The Nuristanis are an Indo-Iranian people, representing a third independent branch of the Aryan peoples (Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani), who live in isolated regions of northeastern Afghanistan as well as across the border in the district of Chitral in Pakistan. They speak a variety of Nuristani languages. Better known historically as the Kafirs of what was once known as Kafiristan (land of pagans). In the mid-1890s, after the establishment of the Durand Line when Afghanistan reached an agreement on various frontier areas to the British Empire for a period of time, Abdur Rahman Khan conducted a military campaign in Kafiristan and followed up his conquest with forced conversion of the Kafirs to Islam; the region thenceforth being known as Nuristan, the "Land of Light". Before their conversion, the Nuristanis practiced a form of Indo-Iranian (Vedic- or Hindu-like) religion. Non-Muslim religious practices endure in Nuristan today to some degree as folk customs. In their native rural areas, they are often farmers, herders, and dairymen. The population in the 1990s was estimated at 125,000 by some; the Nuristani prefer a figure of 300,000.
The Nuristan region has been a prominent location for war scenes that have led to the death of many indigenous Nuristanis. Nuristan has also received abundance of settlers from the surrounding Afghanistan regions due to the borderline vacant location.
Pamiris are people who speak the Pamiri languages. Pamiris share close linguistic, cultural and religious ties with the people in Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan, the Sarikoli speakers in Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang Province in China and the Wakhi speakers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They practice predominantly Nizari Isma'ili Shia Islam. The Pamiri people have their own distinctive styles of dress, which can differentiate one community from the next. The styles of hats are especially varied: one can spot someone from the Wakhan, as opposed to from Ruhshon or Shugnon valleys, based solely on headwear.
Kurds have been coming to Afghanistan at different times and lived there. Another large wave of Kurdish migration into Afghanistan was the continuation of their migration from Iranian Kurdistan to greater Khorasan during the Afsharid dynasty. Two main groups formed Nader Shah's army. The first was a group of Shahsevan Turks who were in charge of warfare and combat, and the second was a group of Kurds who served as a backup for Nader's army. Although the majority of Afghan Kurds are descendants from the Kurds brought to fight the Mongols, or the descendants of the Kurds who migrated to Afghanistan, or the descendants of Kurds loyal to Nader Shah, a significant amount came in the 1980s to fight in the Soviet–Afghan War to fight against the Soviets. Afghan Kurds today are mostly assimilated, yet acknowledge that they are Kurds, most of them speak Dari as their first language, and only a few Kurdish speakers exist among them. They follow Sunni Islam and mainly live in the cities of Herat, Ghazni, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Kabul. Kurds in Afghanistan number 312,000 people.
The Gujar people are a tribal group who have lived in Afghanistan for centuries. According to the Afghanistan news agency Pajwok Afghan News, there are currently an estimated 1.5 million Gujar people residing in the country. The Gujar people predominantly inhabit northeastern regions of Afghanistan, including Kapisa, Baghlan, Balkh, Kunduz, Takhar, Badakhshan, Nuristan, Laghman, Nangarhar, and Khost. They have a distinct culture and way of life.
The old Afghanistan constitution recognised 14 ethnic groups officially with the Gujar ethnic group being one of them. Many Gujar tribal people in Afghanistan are deprived of their rights and their living conditions are poor. The Gujar in Afghanistan have sometimes been internally displaced in the past by illegal militias, during 2018 around 200 Gujar families were displaced from their homes in Farkhar district in Takhar province. During the corona virus pandemic, the Gujar people in the northeastern province of Badakhshan used Andak meat to treat the corona virus, due to lack of clinics and other health facilities in their areas. The Gujar Tribe Council deemed the meat of the Andak animal as Haram, however many Gujar people in the area said they had no choice.
In the past Gujar tribal leaders have met with the previous President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. The Gujar elders demanded schools and hospitals to be built in their areas and the Afghan government give scholarships to Gujar students to study abroad.
The Kyrgyz population of Afghanistan was 1,130 in 2003, all from the eastern Wakhan District in the Badakhshan Province of northeastern Afghanistan. They live a nomadic lifestyle.
More small groups include the Moghol, Ormur, Wakhi, Sindhi, Hindkowan, Punjabi, Peripatetic groups, and others.
In September 2021, Zablon Simintov left Afghanistan, and thus the Afghan Jewry came to its end.
Of the major ethnicities, the geographic distribution can be varied. Still, there are generally certain regions where one of the ethnic groups tend to dominate the population. Pashtuns are highly concentrated in southern Afghanistan and parts of the east, but nevertheless large minorities exist elsewhere. Tajiks are highly concentrated in the north-east but also form large communities elsewhere such as in western Afghanistan. Hazaras tend to be mostly concentrated in the wider "Hazarajat" region of central Afghanistan, while Uzbeks are densely populated in the north. Some places are very diverse: the city of Kabul, for example, has been considered a "melting pot" where large populations of the major ethnic groups reside, albeit traditionally with a distinct "Kabuli" identity. The provinces of Ghazni, Kunduz, Kabul, and Jowzjan are noted for remarkable ethnic diversity.
The population of Afghanistan was estimated in 2023 at 41.6 million. An additional 3 million or so Afghans are temporarily housed in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, most of whom were born and raised in those two countries. This makes the total Afghan population around 44.6 million, and its current growth rate is 2.33%.
While there are no reliable statistics post-2004, an approximate distribution of the ethnic groups is shown in the chart below: