The provinces of Afghanistan are the primary administrative divisions.

Provincial governors played a critical role in the reconstruction of the Afghan state following the creation of the new government under Hamid Karzai.

[1] According to international security scholar Dipali Mukhopadhyay, many of the provincial governors of the western-backed government were former warlords who were incorporated into the political system.

[1] The following table lists the province, capital, number of districts, UN region, region, ISO 3166-2:AF code and license plate code.

It started out as just Kabul, Herat, Qandahar, and Balkh but the number of provinces increased and by 1880 the provinces consisted of Balkh, Herat, Qandahar, Ghazni, Jalalabad, and Kabul.