Bernardo's Written Presentation

Ethnic Groups and Languages

- The population of Afghanistan includes many different ethnic groups. We don’t know exact figures about the size and composition of the various ethnic groups.

- The largest ethnic group are the Pashtuns, who make up about 40% of Afghanistan’s population. (Amir)

- Although Pashtuns live in many areas of Afghanistan, their base is centered in the south, in a region near Kandahar.

- Male Pashtuns live by ancient tribal code called Pashtunwali, which gives importance to courage, personal honor, resolution, self-reliance and hospitality. The mother tongue of the Pashtuns is Pashto, an Indo-Iranian language.

- The second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan are the Tajiks, a people of Iranian origin. They are about 25% of the population.

- They live in the valleys north of Kabul, and are closely related to the people of Tajikistan.

- The mother tongue of the Tajiks is called Dari (also known as Afghan Persian), which is an Indo-Iranian language closely related to Persian. It is more widely spoken than Pashto in Afghanistan. So, although Pashto is the language of the largest ethnic group, all the other groups use Dari to communicate with one another.

- Another ethnic group are the Hazaras. They live in the central mountain ranges, a region known as Hazarajat. (Hassan)

- Since the Hazaras were part of a religious minority group (Shia Muslim), they were persecuted by the Talibans. Many Hazaras went to Iran, which provided political and military support. They speak a dialect of Persian.

- There are several other ethnic groups, less important, including the Uzbek, Aimak, Turkmen, Baloch, among others.

- All together, these smaller ethnic groups speak more than 70 languages and a great variety of dialects.