Part of the country series of articles.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: EXERCISE HEIGHTENED CAUTIONPARSTATE advises travellers to exercise heightened caution in Afghanistan. Armed conflict, banditry and tribal violence are present across significant portions of the country. Consular assistance outside Kabul and major provincial centres is extremely limited.
| Islamic Republic of Afghanistan | |
|---|---|
| Islamic Republic | |
 |
|
| Capital | Kabul |
| Languages | Dari, Pashto, Uzbek, Hazara, and many regional languages |
| Population | 24,600,000 |
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked plateau state in Central Asia, occupying some of the region’s most rugged terrain at the convergence of routes connecting South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Kabul functions as the administrative capital, and government authority diminishes quickly beyond the major provincial centres into territories governed by tribal councils and local self-styled commanders. The Soviet Union has developed durable ties, establishing trade links and technical assistance programmes in the north, though Soviet ambitions along the northern border have generated friction. Britain retains a consular presence in Kabul dating to the nineteenth century.
The country’s ethnic geography is the central political feature. Pashtuns dominate the south and east, Tajiks the north and much of the civil service, Hazara communities occupy the central highlands under conditions of persistent discrimination, and Uzbeks hold the northwest in a relationship with Kabul that is shaken with each change of government. Islam provides the one institutional framework that crosses these divisions, and the republic deploys Islamic legitimacy in lieu of other forms of administrative authority over its dispersed population. The monarchy that preceded the republic was not fundamentally different in this respect.
The economy is agricultural at its base – wheat, cotton and fruit – alongside opium poppy cultivation that governments have not suppressed. Mineral wealth in the north has attracted foreign interest for decades without significant extraction. The Soviet Union has built roads, dams and schools in the north, maintaining a consistent development presence since the 1950s. Pakistan maintains close ties to Afghanistan’s Pashtun communities and exercises influence through them accordingly.