Pashto
Persian or Urdu also spoken widely as second languagesPashtun society consists of many tribes and clans which were rarely politically united,[14] until the rise of the Durrani Empire in 1747.[3] Pashtuns played a vital role during the Great Game as they were caught between the imperialist designs of the British and Russian empires. For over 250 years, they reigned as the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan. More recently, the Pashtuns gained worldwide attention after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and with the rise and fall of the Taliban, since they are the main ethnic contingent in the movement. Pashtuns are also an important community in Pakistan, where they are prominently represented in the military and are the second-largest ethnic group.[15]
The Pashtuns are the world's largest (patriarchal) segmentary lineage ethnic group.[16] The total population of the group is estimated to be around 42 million, but an accurate count remains elusive due to the lack of an official census in Afghanistan since 1979.[17] There are an estimated 60 major Pashtun tribes and more than 400 sub-clans.[18]
The vast majority of Pashtuns are found in an area stretching from southeastern Afghanistan to northwestern Pakistan. Additional Pashtun communities are found in the Northern Areas of Pakistan and in Khorasan Province of eastern Iran. There is also a sizeable community in India, that is of largely putative ancestry.[8][19] A large migrant-worker community resides in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula and in smaller communities in Europe and North America. Important metropolitan centers of Pashtun culture include Kandahar, Jalalabad and Swat. Peshawar, Quetta, Kabul and Kunduz are ethnically mixed cities with large Pashtun populations. With 3.5 million ethnic Pashtuns, Karachi hosts one of the largest Pashtun populations in the world.[20]
