The Challenges to Nation-Building
in Afghanistan
continues....

Farsiwans (or Persians) are also Dari speaking. They live in western Afghanistan near the Iranian border. Farsiwans, like the majority of Iranians, are Twelver Shi’a. Qizilbash are remnants of the old Iranian presence. They are Twelver Shi’a and some use taqfyya to pass as Sunni.

They are a very small group found in Afghan urban centres but are, of course, Dari speakers. Hazaras speak a dialect of Dari and live primarily in central Afghanistan. Among Hazaras are members of every Muslim religious sect in the country: Ismaili, Twelver Shi’a, and Sunni. Altaic languages are also represented in the country by speakers of Turkic languages. The Uzbeks are Sunni who speak Uzbek, a Turkic dialect. Turkic languages are not in the same family as Indo-European languages (such as Dari and Pashtu). Uzbeks live in a large semicircular area roughly following Afghanistan’s northern borders, from Faryab Province almost to Feyzabad. Turkmen are another Sunni Turkic speaking group found scattered throughout the northernmost portion of Afghanistan along the Soviet border.

The Kirghiz are also Turkic speaking and, until recently, lived in the Pamir mountains of the Wakhan Corridor. The Kirghiz lived it the high mountain valleys of this region, while another ethnic group, the Wakhi, occupied lowland areas. The Kirghiz are Sunnis. The neighboring Wakhi, or Mountain Tajik, are speakers of Iranian dialects. They are often Ismaili but, according to Dupree, some Wakhi Twelver Shi’as and Sunnis also exist. They generally live in the same regions as the Kirghiz but at lower
altitudes.

Nuristanis are Sunni who speak dialects of Dari and often also Pashtu. They live in the Nangarhar, Laghman, and Parvan areas of eastern Afghanistan. The area where the Nuristanis live, Nuristan, was the scene of the first armed opposition to the Khalq government. Arabs are a Sunni group living in northeastern Afghanistan, primarily “in an arc extending from Maimana to Kunduz.” Here they speak a dialect of Farsi that is mixed with Uzbek vocabulary. Some scholars report that Arabic speaking Arab communities exist in the area of Balkh.

To be continued...