Afghanistan (6 page)

Afghanistan’s population has grown to about 30–33 million, from 15–20 million in the 1970s. The high rate of growth has made the demographic “youth bulge” that affects many Middle Eastern countries even more pronounced in Afghanistan, with about 4.5 million young men aged 15–29 and about 6.7 million boys under 15; 45 percent of all males are under 15, two to three times the percentage in developed countries. In the absence of a recent census—the most recent attempt was in 1979, and security concerns have halted post-2001 plans—all population figures, especially those associated with ethnolinguistic groups, remain politically charged estimates.

The population patterns have not recovered from the effects of the conflicts of 1978–2001, which saw Afghans becoming the world’s largest refugee population (especially in Pakistan and Iran) and internally displaced many of the more than 75 percent of the population that had lived in rural areas. The numbers of Afghanistan’s internal refugees, despite terrible living conditions, led to a considerable increase in urbanization. Even the heavy fighting in Kabul in 1992–96 did not reverse this trend.

Afghanistan’s human resources, like its natural ones, remain tremendously underdeveloped. Afghanistan’s level of human development is less than any of its neighbors. An estimated two thirds of the population is illiterate. In Pakistan, only the FATA—where male overall literacy is estimated as less than 30 percent and female literacy at fewer than four percent—is worse off than Afghanistan.

The worldwide Afghan diaspora, while highly motivated and devoted to Afghanistan, is relatively small and lacks resources or political influence in the countries they now largely call home. The ties of blood and affection to Afghanistan are limited, in most developed countries, to small communities of exiles and refugees and to that still-smaller group of foreigners that care about or have an interest in its people and future.

Recent UN development indices have shown Afghanistan near the bottom, ranking 174 out of 178 countries in the 2007 Global Human Development Index.
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The most important activity is agriculture, with
the most profitable crop being the illicit cultivation of opium, which has become concentrated in five southern provinces. Specialty agricultural products (raisins and pomegranates), wheat, and other grains are also widely grown. Afghanistan’s undeveloped natural resources, including natural gas and copper, may prove valuable in the future, given outside investment and a functioning infrastructure, all now blocked by the conflict and the political weakness in Kabul. US-provided surveys post-2001 have identified what could become valuable industries if a suitable infrastructure is provided. China has started to make investments in natural gas and copper development.

Ethnolinguistic Divisions

While in no significant way homogenous, Afghans nevertheless possess a strong sense of national identity that coexists with correspondingly strong Islamic faith and equally strong overlapping and non-exclusive ethnolinguistic, tribal (especially among Pushtuns of which clan or sub-clan identification is often strongest), qawm (affinity group), local (e.g., Panjsheris, from the Panjshir valley), and kinship identities. The Western estimates used to produce ethnolinguistic maps and percentages of population associated with each group have to be used with great care.

There is no one consensus among Afghans on what constitute specific ethnic, religious, or racial groups. Afghans all share some aspects of identity with cross-border groups in their neighbors from all three of the adjacent regions: shared language, religion and religious practice, literature, culture, and, in some cases, tribal structure. But the Afghans generally do not perceive themselves as the unredeemed part of a secessionist group. If others from across the border wish to join them, great, but few want to leave. Afghanistan is not the former Yugoslavia.

The Pushtuns (also called Pathan, Pashtun, and Pukhtun) are primarily Sunni (with a few Shia tribes, mainly in Pakistan). Pushtuns are the world’s largest tribal grouping, a tribally subdivided, clan-based society. The Pushtuns have been historically the dominant group in Afghanistan. The most credible Western estimates (such as those produced by the UN or the CIA Fact Book) are that Pushtuns currently represent about 38–43 percent of the population of Afghanistan, although some estimates
put the percentage up to ten percent greater than these. However, it is an article of faith among the government and elites of Pakistan and Pushtuns around the world that Pushtuns are an absolute majority in Afghanistan.

Afghan Pushtuns are divided into at least four major tribal subgroupings: Durranis, Ghilzays, Ghurghustis, and the Kharoshtis and Eastern Pushtuns. Each of these is divided further into families of tribes and tribes, each tribe divided into khels (clans) and sub-clans. Afghan’s Kuchi nomads, a much smaller group, are also ethnic Pushtuns. Pushtuns primarily speak the Pushtu (also called Pashto) language. While there are significant dialect differences between Pushtu-speakers, they all are mutually intelligible. Complicating the ethnic division is the fact that many ethnic Pushtuns are actually primarily Dari-speakers that use Pushtu as a second language.

The Pushtuns have ties running across the Durand Line, which has proven important for the continued conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan’s approximately 13.8 million Pushtuns have 26.6 million counterparts in Pakistan, with the heartland in the FATA, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and Baluchistan, but with substantial populations throughout the country in major cities, especially Karachi. In Pakistan, Pushtuns run the nationwide “transport mafia,” “lumber mafia,” and other economic activities, making use of their ethnic trading connections.

The largest group of Afghanistan’s Persian (Afghan Dari and Iranian Farsi are like British and American English) speakers are Tajiks. Tajiks are defined as Sunni (with some Ismailis), Dari-speaking, and make up an estimated 20 percent of the population. The relatively recent rise of a distinct Tajik ethnic identity shows how these definitions are not fixed in Afghanistan. Many Afghans have said “we only learned we were Tajiks from the BBC.” Before that, they were self-defined, perhaps as Heratis, Panjsheris, Badakshis (the natives of Badakhshan province, described by Marco Polo as “Muslim and valiant in war”), or multiple identities.

The Hazara are racially distinct Mongol descendants, predominantly Imami Shia (with a few Sunnis), Dari-speaking, internally divided by tribe and lineage. They make up about eight to ten percent of the population
(estimates go to 15–20 percent; their own leaders claim up to 35 percent). Farsiwans are Imami Shia, Farsi (rather than Dari) speaking, closely related to Iranians. Afghanistan’s Shia population is estimated at about 16 percent if the urban Qizilbash, Dari-speaking descendants of the Persian Empire’s ruling elites that are among Afghanistan’s most educated groups, are included. The Aimaqs are less than five percent of the population. They are a Sunni, Dari-speaking, semi-nomadic group, divided into four distinctive clans.

The Uzbeks are the largest group among the speakers of Turkic languages in the north; Sunni, Uzbek-speaking (with Dari as a second language), tribe and clan-based (although this has less military-political meaning than it does for Pushtuns), constituting some 13 percent of Afghanistan’s population. In addition to Uzbeks, there are also small populations of Turkmen and Kyrgyz. Unlike the Pushtuns, they have fewer links—economic, political and cultural—with other members of their ethnic groups across national borders in central Asia, a legacy of the decades of the Iron Curtain on Afghanistan’s northern border. Many members of these groups, like many Afghan Tajiks, are descended from refugees from Russian or Soviet repression.

Smaller tribes and ethnic and religious groups include Ismaili Shias, called “Seveners,” who are primarily Dari-speaking and have their strongest concentration near Pul-e-Khumri on the northern end of the Salang Pass. The Pashai (strongest in Nangarhar and Laghman provinces), Brahui (concentrated in the southern provinces), and Baluchi (in the south, contiguous with their counterparts in Pakistan and Iran) all have their own languages but also speak Pashto as a second language. Other groups include the Nuristanis (whose language is divided into five distinct dialects and use Pashto as a second language) and Gujurs (who speak Dari as a second language). The only non-Muslims are a few hundred Hindus and Sikhs in Kabul, Kandahar, and Jalalabad, remnants of once-thriving trading communities. Afghanistan’s Sephardic Jewish communities that, at their height, had their own vigorous culture and traded with others along the Silk Route had been reduced to two aged gentlemen by the time the Taliban were driven from Kabul in 2001.

All in all, there is no agreement as to the number of languages and
ethnic affiliations in Afghanistan, even within the seemingly binary division of Pushtun versus non-Pushtun. Despite the lack of agreement as to what constitutes an ethnic group and the lack of a formal census to determine the population’s ethnicity, it is apparent that few of Afghanistan’s major regions or even its 34 provinces are ethnically homogenous. There is more diversity in Afghanistan than just about any other country of comparable size and population.

Of the major loosely defined geographical regions, the Northwest is populated mainly by Dari speakers but also includes Pushtuns. In the North, Mazar-e-Sharif and the northern plains are the most multi-ethnic area, with communities of Uzbeks and Tajiks being the primary groups alongside substantial Pushtun and Hazara populations. The Northeast is primarily Tajiks but includes a number of smaller groups, such as the Nuristanis. Pushtun minority populations remain in this region. The Hazara Jat is the most cohesive entity, being, as its name implies, the home of the Hazaras. The South and Kandahar is the Pushtun heartland, populated primarily by Durrani and Ghilzay Pushtun tribes. The East is also primarily Pushtun, but is also where that people’s tribal fragmentation is most widespread. Kabul, like most of Afghanistan’s cities, including Kandahar, was originally Persian-speaking, but for a century attracted emigrants from the countryside even before the 1978–2001 conflicts led to floods of internal refugees. Other regions have their own unique patterns of ethnic divisions. Kunduz, for example, is a Pushtun-majority city in a predominantly Dari-speaking countryside.

It is clear, then, that just as ethnic identification is not fixed, Afghanistan cannot be easily divided into ethnic cantons. Ethnolinguistic maps of Afghanistan are approximations at best and too often misleading. Ethnicity can be fluid, situational, and multilayered. This especially applies to Pushtuns with often-competing loyalties to an overarching Pushtun identity, to tribal groups (e.g., Durrani) and, often most significant, to a specific clan or tribe (e.g., Popalzai, of which President Karzai is also a hereditary chief). Many of the larger groups (especially tribes and clans) share at least a fictive shared descent (usually from a heroic common ancestor). This, along with the patriarchal and patrilineal nature of authority that cuts across most Afghan ethnic groups, makes family
lineages important. Among Pushtuns, lineages often determine political alignments and can be a primary cause of infighting.

However, for all these nuances, the divide that is most important for Afghanistan’s conflicts is the binary one between Pushtuns and non-Pushtuns, which largely means Persian-speakers. The many other languages including Uzbek, Pashai, Baluchi, Nuristani, and Turkmen do not change the basic bilingual division of Afghanistan. Many small groups, like the Pashai, do not define themselves as a minority. Most small groups are bilingual. The Nuristanis whose homeland is in the most remote part of the Northeast—racially distinct Indo-Europeans converted by the sword to Islam in the nineteenth century—do not share a common language.

While Afghanistan’s Persian and Turkic speakers share languages and cultural links with populations outside Afghanistan’s borders, these are qualitatively different from the links between Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Pushtuns. Pushtun nationalism has a transborder impact far beyond that of other groups. The relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan has shaped the region for decades, and the impact of the transborder Pushtuns has, in turn, been the critical factor in that relationship.

Since the formation of the proto-Afghanistan state in 1747, the only times when the de facto head of state has not been a Pushtun has been in two periods marked by intensive civil war, 1930 and 1992–96. The ethnolinguistic mobilization of Afghans that has taken place since 1978 means that state power, central power, and rule from Kabul have been increasingly identified with Pushtun power. The belief of many Pushtuns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan that this is the only legitimate possibility for the future of Afghanistan is not accepted by the non-Pushtuns of that country, politically mobilized by decades of conflict and better and more cohesively organized than the tribally divided Pushtuns. While no other group had the numbers of the Pushtun, these have at times been able to use their Dari language and opposition to Pakistan’s policies that stressed the importance of Pushtun control of state power in Afghanistan to work together, most notably in the pre-2001 Northern Alliance, which included substantial Pushtun allies in the form of Dr. Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf Ittehad-i-Islami (one of the Peshawar Seven) and the Nangarhar shura of Haji Qadir (previously part of HiK) plus a number of Pushtun leaders that were opposed to the Taliban, including Hamid Karzai, who became president of Afghanistan.

Faith

Islam is central to the future of Afghanistan. Traditional Afghan Islamic practice is distinct from that of the Arab world, the subcontinent (although this has been the source of most outside influences), and Persia (reflecting the Sunni-Shia divide). Traditional Afghan practice recognized that there is no compulsion in Islam and did not seek to extend its dictates, except by persuasion, beyond the walls of the family compound. Yet this did not prevent Afghanistan’s nineteenth-century King Abdur Rahman from converting the polytheistic Kafirs of the northeast to the Muslim Nuristanis by the sword, or conquering alike Shia Hazaras and Sunni Turkic-speakers. While traditional Afghan Islam as a whole has never been fanatic, it has also never been pacific. For example, it reveres the archetype of the ghazi, the raider and warrior, never afraid to strike a blow for Islam and his honor.