How many people live in Afghanistan? It turns out that there is a surprisingly wide range of answers, fluctuating by over 15 million people. Afghanistan may have almost 50 million people, putting it in the league of Spain and South Korea. Or it may have around 35 million people, around the same population as Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, or Peru.
This matters because a country’s population is a key element of its standing in the world, allowing it to build economic and military power. Combined with Afghanistan’s prominent geopolitical location at the heart of Asia and its mineral wealth, which is estimated to be worth $1 trillion, Afghanistan could well emerge as a middle power in a few decades. It can certainly emerge as a major player in South-Central Asia, a thorn in Pakistan’s side, while also projecting influence into former Soviet Central Asia and a stagnant Iran. In fact, counterintuitively, the fact that the Taliban have united the country and ended decades of war may lay the ground for the peace and stability needed for future prosperity.
Conversely, such a large population is not without its challenges, particularly for an arid, mountainous, landlocked country with little industry and modern technology. If not managed well, this could have implications for the future stability of the region, especially if there is a large reservoir of unemployed men of fighting age, with no prospects.
There are several issues with enumerating Afghanistan’s population, starting with the fact that there hasn’t been an actual census in over four decades. The last — and only census — conducted in Afghanistan, in 1979, revealed a population of 13,051,358 people. Even this census was incomplete, with mountainous communities being particularly hard to count. Furthermore, nomads such as the Kochi — Pashtun-speaking pastoralists—were not counted, and their numbers were estimated.
Since then, Afghanistan has experienced invasion, civil war, and major strife. Millions of refugees fled to Pakistan and Iran, but both countries have recently expelled many Afghans. In 2025 alone, over 1.9 million people were expelled into Afghanistan from those two countries. Furthermore, Afghanistan has one of the highest fertility rates in the world; the average woman gives birth to almost five children. Afghanistan is almost certainly on track to gain a lot of people. The United Nations estimates that it will have almost 130 million by 2100, significantly more than Iran or the Central Asian states.
As a result of these factors, population estimates vary wildly for Afghanistan. The Encyclopedia Britannica gave a 2025 figure of 36,432,000. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said 40,121,552 in 2024. The World Health Organization estimated a population of 41,454,761 in 2023. The U.N. approximated 42,045,000 in 2024.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated a population of around 49.5 million in 2025. Given the high fertility rate, large number of communities not counted or surveyed, and return of refugees, a population number at the higher end of the range is more likely than not. My personal sense is that Afghanistan probably has between 45 and 50 million people as of this writing.
In addition to the uncertainty over the number of people in Afghanistan itself, the ethnic and linguistic breakdown of the population is also murky. Ethnic and linguistic politics could play a role in the future internal dynamics of Afghanistan. In addition to the lack of accurate data after decades of war, ethnic numbers and percentages have been manipulated by multiple Afghan governments to favor or disfavor certain groups.
The two largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan are the Pashtuns or Pakhtuns — also traditionally known as Afghans — and the Tajiks. Other, smaller groups include the Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, Baloch, Nuristani, Pashayi, and various small Pamiri groups. Most major groups, except the Shia Hazara, are Sunni Muslims. The Pashtuns, who as Afghans, gave their name to the country of Afghanistan, have historically been the dominant ethnic group, having founded and ruled the modern Afghan state in the 18th century CE. The modern dynasties — the Hotak, the Sadozai (Durranis), and the Barakzai — were Pashtun, as is the bulk of the Taliban movement.
The Pashtuns speak Pashto, an Eastern Iranian language that has between 45 and 55 million speakers in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. It is Afghanistan’s largest native language. It is estimated that it is the native language of around half of Afghanistan’s population, the overwhelming majority of whom are ethnic Pashtuns. In other words, there may be around 22-25 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan. While the Pashtun have traditionally lived south of the Hindu Kush mountains in southern and eastern Afghanistan, they have spread throughout much of Afghanistan. In the 18th century, the Abdali Pashtuns took over the governance of Herat, which was a major Persian city previously. Since 1880, Afghan governments have sought to resettle Pashtuns throughout the country.
Eastern Iranian languages and peoples are among the oldest inhabitants of modern Afghanistan and the adjacent regions of Central Asia. They include peoples such as the Kambojas — mentioned in Sanskrit literature — Pactyans, Asvakas, Sogdians — who founded Samarkand and Bukhara — and the Bactrians, who inhabited the present-day area of Balkh (Bactria) in northern Afghanistan. The scholarly consensus is that the Pashtuns are descended from a mix of these ancient groups, and have, in historical times, assimilated many newcomers. For example, much of Afghanistan was ruled by a Central Asian group known as Hephthalites or Ebodalo (White Huns) in the 5th century, from whom the Pashtun Abdali tribe — who gave rise to the Durranis, Sadozai, and Barakzai — are thought to have descended. The Pashtuns have demonstrated a remarkable flexibility to incorporate new tribal groups into their society.
The other major language in Afghanistan is Dari, which is a politically-charged name for the Persian language in Afghanistan. Persian is a Western Iranian language that originated in modern Iran, and gained prominence and social prestige as the language of various Iranian empires. Dari is spoken by several groups in Afghanistan, and was used as a courtly language even by Pashtun dynasties. However, in modern times, because Dari is spoken by several disparate groups, none of which is in the higher echelons of powers, the demographics of Dari-speaking ethnic groups are uncertain. Pashtun elites have sought to sideline Persian for over a century, but the language has persisted as the country’s lingua franca because of its prestige and cultural influence. While only perhaps 32 percent of the country speaks Persian as a mother tongue, it is estimated that up to 77 percent of Afghans can speak it, including second-language speakers.
In early medieval times, the Bactrian language was especially prominent in modern Afghanistan, being used as an official language by the Kushans and Hephthalites. After the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan, however, Persian spread among various peoples in the region who came to be called Tajiks. Tajiks, like Pashtuns, are descended from the native Eastern Iranian inhabitants of the region — not Persians from Iran. Other Persian-speaking groups in Afghanistan include the Hazara, descended from a mix of Tajik and Mongol ancestors; the Farsiwan, who are Shia-speaking Persians near the Iranian border; and the Aimaq, nomadic Persian speakers.
The true numbers of Tajiks and Hazara in Afghanistan are highly variable, due to politicized reporting and data collection. During the Pashtun-dominated monarchy, the proportion of Pashtun in Afghanistan was frequently estimated to be around 60 percent, but when the Soviet-supported Afghan government fell in 1992 to an alliance dominated by northern Afghan groups, the demographic estimates of Afghanistan were revised. For example, the World Almanac in 2000 estimated that Pashtuns consisted of 38 percent of the population, Tajiks 25 percent, and Hazaras 19 percent. This would represent a radically different understanding of Afghanistan’s ethnic demography than had been previously thought.
Estimates for the Tajik population of Afghanistan have ranged from 12 to 30 percent, while that of the Hazara has ranged from 3 to 19 percent. In a more neutral vein, what can be said is that since native Persian speakers make up around 30 to 35 percent of Afghanistan’s population, that is probably the combined proportion of the Tajik and Hazara, who together number perhaps 16 million people. Of these, there are probably significantly more Tajiks than Hazaras, as the former have been quite well-represented in the culture and politics of Afghanistan for decades.
Nonetheless, despite the cultural influence of Persian, demographics and politics favor the Pashtun and there is no evidence that the quest to Pashtunize Afghanistan is close to faltering. In the future, it may be possible that the continued dominance of the Taliban might spread Pashto further. A large, populous, and perhaps one day, economically prosperous, country dominated by Pashtuns could dent the influence of Iran and the Turkic-speaking Central Asian states in Afghanistan and the South-Central Asian region.