[15] The average woman gives birth to five children during her entire life, the highest fertility rate outside of Africa.

Pashto is widely used in the regions south of the Hindu Kush mountains and as far as the Indus River in neighbouring Pakistan.

Birth certificates, passports, and the national anthem are exclusively in Pashto to the ire of Non-Pashto speakers.

Excluding urban populations in the principal cities, most people are organised into tribal and other kinship-based groups, who follow their own traditional customs.

Anatol Lieven of Georgetown University in Qatar wrote in 2021 that "it may be noted that in the whole of modern Afghan history there has never been a census that could be regarded as remotely reliable.

[23] In Kandahar in 1891 a population census was carried out, according to which 31,514 people lived in the city, of which 16,064 were men and 15,450 were women.

[24] From 1979 until the end of 1983, some 5 million people left the country to take shelter in neighbouring northwestern Pakistan and eastern Iran.

[26] These figures are questionable and no attempt has ever been made to verify if they were actually killed or had moved to neighbouring countries as refugees.

[25] As no census has been performed after 1979 and millions of people may have left the country, the current population of Afghanistan can only be guessed.

[30] Urban areas have experienced rapid population growth in the last decade, which is due to the return of over 5 million expats.

[36] Crude Birth Rate (CBR), Total Fertility Rate (TFR) and Wanted Fertility Rate (WFR):[37] Fertility data by province in 2015 DHS Survey[38] and 2022–23 MICS Survey:[39] Source: UN World Population Prospects[40] An approximate distribution of the ethnolinguistic groups are listed in the chart below:[citation needed] The recent estimate in the above chart is somewhat supported by the below national opinion polls, which were aimed at knowing how a group of about 804 to 8,706 local residents in Afghanistan felt about the current war, political situation, as well as the economic and social issues affecting their daily lives.

Islam was used as the main basis for expressing opposition to the progressive reforms of Afghanistan by King Amanullah in the 1920s.