Author: David C. Champagne
Source: Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, 1980.
Immigration to the United States from Afghanistan has been sporadic. There are approximately 2,500 Afghans in the country. Many of the recent immigrants from Afghanistan entered the United States as students and stayed; others were trained in the United States under various developmental programs, returned to Afghanistan, and later came back to the United States for political or economic reasons. The majority of Afghans residing in the United States are well educated and able to find employment and economic security. They represent many of the linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups of the nation-state of Afghanistan.
The name Afghanistan is of relatively recent origin. In its earliest usage, it did not refer to any organized political entity, but was first used by the Safavid dynasty of Iran and the Moghul dynasty of India to refer to the geographical areas of their empires populated and controlled by Pushtun (Pathan) tribal peoples.
Since 1747 some of the lands controlled by the Pushtuns have been united into a recognizable social-political unit. In that year Pushtun tribal elders chose Ahmad Khan Saduzay as the head of a new confederation of Pushtun tribes, establishing the first independent Pushtun-controlled kingdom in central Asia. Ahmad Shah Saduzay took the title "Durrani" and his kingdom became known as the Durrani Sultanate. Today he is looked upon as the father of Afghanistan. The sultanate became an empire stretching from the Indus River to the Dasht-i Lut (desert) and from the Oxus River to the Indian Ocean. The simultaneous decline of the Safavid Empire of Iran and the Moghul Empire of India, and the growth of proto-nationalism among some of the western Pushtun tribes, were largely responsible for the emergence of this new state. Modern landlocked Afghanistan is located within a portion of this vast area.
The area that became the Durrani kingdom had a long history of its own; it had been the crossroads for the central Asian invaders of India and the western Islamic world. Numerous pre-Islamic and Islamic states had formed here, including those of the Kushans, Bactrians, Ghaznavids, and Ghorids. Afghanistan's heterogeneous population reflects the various groups who conquered and passed through it.
At the end of the 18th century the empire dissolved, but the central core remained. For most of the 19th century Afghanistan was the arena for Anglo-Russian rivalry in central Asia, acting as a buffer zone between Russian Central Asia and the British Empire in India. In the 1880s, after a long period of internal conflict and external pressures, Afghanistan was reunited under Amir Abdul Rahman. Only then did the name Afghanistan become widely accepted by the inhabitants as the official name of their country.
A strict ethnographic definition of the word "Afghan" refers to native speakers of Pashto (Pushtu), many of whom live outside present-day Afghanistan in the northwest part of Pakistan. But in the broadest sense, Afghan signifies all current citizens of the nation-state of Afghanistan.
A divisive factor in Afghan society is the persistence of intense extended-family and tribal loyalties among the people. The strongest loyalty is to the extended family, then to tribe and religious sect, and lastly to the nation-state. Only among the literate and younger generation does the concept of identity with and loyalty to the nation-state outweigh responsibility to the extended family, tribe, or religion. For this reason, tribal groups have always dominated Afghan politics and nepotism is common.
There are 12 to 15 million people in modem Afghanistan. At least two million of them are nomads, but there has never been any comprehensive census. It is estimated that the population is comprised of approximately 60 percent Pushtuns, 15 percent Tadzhiks, and the remaining 25 percent a mixture of Turkomans, Uzbeks, Hazarahs, Baluchi, Kirghiz, Nuristanis, and others. Various dialects of Dari (Afghan Persian), another Indo-European language, are spoken by over 85 percent of the people as either a first or second language. At the present time both Pashto and Dari are among the official languages of Afghanistan. Numerous other languages and dialects are spoken, including Turki, Uzbeki, Kirghizi, and Baluchi.
The introduction of Islam by Arab invaders during the 8th and 9th centuries was one of the most important events in the area. Today 99 percent of the population is Muslim—80 percent Sunni, 19 percent Shiite. Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, and a few Jewish families make up the remaining 1 percent. Hindus and Sikhs play important roles in the cities of Kabul (the capital), Jalalabad, and Kandahar, in the textile, spice, and import-export trades.
Determining the proportion of the various Afghan ethnic groups among those who have immigrated to the United States is difficult. Before 1953 statistics are virtually nonexistent. Those that do exist group Afghans and others in a category entitled "other Asians," with no specific mention of country of origin. A group of 200 Pushtuns came to the United States in 1920. Although they came from the North-West Frontier Province of what was then British India (now a province of Pakistan), some of them were probably Afghan citizens. During the 1930s and 1940s immigration from Afghanistan was minimal. Those who did immigrate came alone or in small family units. These early immigrants were members of the Afghan elite —highly educated people from the diplomatic, medical, engineering, and business professions, some of whom were married to Europeans. The immigrants of the 1930s and 1940s tended to locate on the East and West coasts and around Washington, D.C.
Between 1953 and 1963, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, only 78 people from Afghanistan became American citizens. In the next ten-year period an additional 155 Afghans were naturalized, a marked increase reflecting foreign travel and educational opportunities resulting from Western ties.
Emigration from Afghanistan between 1953 and 1963 was still on an individual and extended-family member basis. During the 1950s and 1960s Afghan males came to the United States usually to obtain a college education and then stayed, later sending for their wives and families. In the late 1950s and 1960s Afghan women also began to travel to the United States for higher education. Some stayed, though the percentage of women remaining in the United States was much lower than that of men.
The period between 1973 and 1977 saw a large increase in the number of Afghans naturalized, perhaps as a result of political upheavals in Afghanistan. In total, between 1953 and 1977, 343 Afghans became American citizens.
In addition to those Afghans who opted to become citizens, several thousand since 1953 obtained resident alien status; 575 Afghan nationals in the United States at present have this designation. Some 300 others are in the country on various government-sponsored educational and cultural exchange programs.
Most Afghans who live in the United States maintain close ties with their extended families in Afghanistan, although they live in nuclear families. Though they have adapted well to their new country they have retained Islam as their religion, and tend to observe its tenets.
There are Afghans in almost every state of the Union. The largest concentrations of them are in the cities of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York. Afghans are attracted to these and other large metropolitan areas by employment opportunities. As a group, the Afghans in the United States still represent the social and economic elite of their native society. Now, however, members of other groups of Afghan peoples have gained the opportunity to study abroad because of their intellectual abilities. A higher percentage of the smaller Afghan minority groups, including Uzbeks, Turkomans, Hazarahs, Nuristanis, and Baluchi are present among the more recent immigrants.
Overall, Afghans in the United States tend to be well-educated members of the academic and business communities. Medicine, engineering, education, anthropology, languages, and various scientific fields are their most common professions. Numerous Afghans hold high positions at universities throughout the United States. Many have gone into private business, from solar energy development to carpet cleaning. Afghans have established restaurants in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis, and Oakland, Calif.
The institution of a Marxist regime in Afghanistan in 1978 and subsequent turmoil have caused a recent influx of immigrants to the United States. The number of Afghans applying for extensions of student visas and for resident alien status has substantially increased.
A small group of second-generation Afghan Americans does exist. Where both parents are Afghan, the children usually are bicultural and bilingual. The children of mixed marriages tend to be bicultural, but speak only English. Afghan Americans continue to give their children Afghan or Islamic names. In so doing they maintain a measure of cultural continuity and help to preserve ties with their extended families in Afghanistan.
There are no published studies on Afghans living in the United States. The most comprehensive volume on Afghanistan and Afghans is Louis Dupree, Afghanistan (Princeton, N.J., 1973). Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul (1815; reprint, Karachi, 1972), is a basic work on Afghan tribal society. For a history of the Pushtuns see Olaf Caroe, The Pathans, 550 B.C.-A.D. 1957 (New York, 1968).
For political developments in Afghanistan, see Ludwig Adamec, Afghanistan, 1900-1923 (Berkeley, 1967); Leon Poullada, Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan, 1919-1929 (Ithaca, N.YV 1973); Rhea Talley Stuart, Fire in Afghanistan, 1914-1929 (New York, 1973); and Hasan Kakar, Government and Society in Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir 'abd al-Rahman (Austin, Tex., 1979).
The two major organizations in the United States involved with Afghanistan are the Afghanistan Council of the Asia Society, in New York City, and the Afghanistan Studies Association based at the Center for Afghanistan Studies, in Omaha, Nebr.