Afghans in the context of "Asian Americans"

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمّد رومی), or simply Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a Sufi mystic and poet whose followers went on to found the Mevlevi Order most famous for its whirling dervishes – a practice that he instigated. Rumi is a seminal figure in Sufism, or mystical Islam, whose thought and works loom large in both Persian literature and mystic poetry in general, with his translated works being enjoyed globally to this day.

Rumi's works are written in his mother tongue, Persian. He occasionally used the Arabic language and single Turkish and Greek words in his verse. His Masnavi (Mathnawi), composed in Konya, is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. Rumi's influence has transcended national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Afghans, Tajiks, Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Central Asian Muslims, as well as Muslims of the Indian subcontinent have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poetry influenced not only Persian literature, but also the literary traditions of the Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu, and Bengali languages.

As of 2025, Afghanistan has an estimated population of around 49.5 million people. The country is characterized by a highly diverse, multi-ethnic, and multilingual society, reflecting its historical position at the crossroads of Central, South, and Western Asia, along ancient trade and invasion routes. The four major ethnic categories in the country are Pashtun, Tajik/Farsiwan, Hazara, and Uzbek. In addition, Afghanistan has a plethora of minor ethnic categories, including Turkmen, Baloch, Aimaq, Nuristani, Arab and many others. Together they make up the contemporary Afghan people.

Approximately 43% of the population was under the age of 15, and about 74% of Afghans lived in rural areas as of 2016. The country has one of the highest fertility rates in the world outside of Africa, with the average woman giving birth to five children over her lifetime. Around 6.8% of infants die during childbirth or early infancy. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the nation's average life expectancy was estimated at about 63 years as of 2019. The prevalence of HIV remains very low, affecting only about 0.04% of the population.

An Afghan personal name consists of a given name (Dari: نام, Pashto: نوم) and sometimes a surname at the end. Personal names are generally not divided into first and family names; a single name is recognized as a full personal name, and the addition of further components – such as additional given names, regional, or ethnic family/clan names or patronymics – is often a matter of parents' choice. This structure is shared amongst the different ethnicities of Afghanistan and people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Hinduism in Afghanistan is practiced by a very small minority of Afghans, about 30–40 individuals as of 2021, who live mostly in the cities of Kabul and Jalalabad. Afghan Hindus are ethnically Pashtun, Hindkowan (Hindki), Punjabi, or Sindhi and primarily speak Dari, Pashto, Hindko, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu).

Before the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan, the Afghan people were multi-religious. Religious persecution, discrimination, and religious conversions of Hindus in Afghanistan perpetrated by Muslims, has caused the Afghan Hindus, along with Buddhist and Sikh population, to dwindle from Afghanistan.

The 1842 retreat from Kabul was the retreat of the British and East India Company forces from Kabul during the First Anglo-Afghan War. An uprising in Kabul forced the then-commander, Major-General William Elphinstone, to fall back to the British garrison at Jalalabad. In early January 1842, as the army and its numerous dependants and camp followers began their march, they came under attack from Afghan tribesmen. Many in the column died of exposure, frostbite or starvation, or were killed during the fighting.

At the beginning of the conflict, British and East India Company forces had defeated the forces of Afghan Emir Dost Mohammad Barakzai and in 1839 occupied Kabul, restoring the former ruler, Shah Shujah Durrani, as emir. However a deteriorating situation made their position more and more precarious, until an uprising in Kabul forced Maj. Gen. Elphinstone to withdraw. To this end he negotiated an agreement with Wazir Akbar Khan, one of the sons of Dost Mohammad Barakzai, by which Elphinstone’s army was to be guaranteed security as they fell back to the Jalalabad garrison, more than 140 kilometres (90 mi) away.

Afghan Arabs (Arabic: أفغان عرب; Pashto: افغان عربان; Dari: عرب‌های افغان) were the Arab Muslims who immigrated to Afghanistan and joined the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. The term does not refer to the Central Asian Arabs of Afghanistan who are an ethnic Arab minority group living in the north western parts of the country. Despite being referred to as Afghans, they originated from the Arab world and did not hold Afghan citizenship.

It is estimated that between 8,000 and 35,000 Arabs immigrated to Afghanistan to partake in what much of the Muslim world was calling an Islamic holy war against the Soviet Union, which had militarily intervened in Afghanistan to support the ruling People's Democratic Party against the rebelling jihadists. The Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was the first Arab journalist from a major Arabic-language media organization to cover the Soviet–Afghan War, approximated that there were 10,000 Arab volunteer fighters in Afghanistan during the conflict. Among many Muslims, the Afghan Arabs achieved near hero-status for their association with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1989, and it was with this prestige that they were later able to exert considerable influence in mounting jihadist struggles in other countries, including their own. Their name notwithstanding, none of them were Afghans, and some who were grouped with the community were not even Arabs. A number of the foreign jihadists in Afghanistan were Turkic or Malay, among other ethnicities, or non-Arabs from Arab countries, such as Kurds.

The ethnonym Afghan (Pashto: افغان) has been used historically to refer to the Pashtuns. Since the second half of the twentieth century, the term "Afghan" evolved into a demonym for all residents of Afghanistan, including those outside of the Pashtun ethnicity.

The Kabul Expedition was a punitive campaign undertaken by the British against the Afghans following the disastrous retreat from Kabul. Two British and East India Company armies forced through the Khyber Pass and advanced on the Afghan capital from Kandahar and Jalalabad to avenge the complete annihilation of the British-Indian military-civilian column in January 1842.

The British force defeated the Afghans twice in battle following which they were able to recover prisoners captured during the retreat. The British demolished parts of Kabul before withdrawing to India, concluding the First Anglo-Afghan War.