Afghanistan is a land of many ethnic minorities!
Some of the ethnic minorities of Afghanistan are the Pushtun, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Aimaq, Baluchi, Afghan Hindus, Afghan Sikhs, Hazara, Nuristani, Pahai, Brahui, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Arab, Gujjar, Kurd, Tatar, Wakhi, Ashkunu, Kamkata-viri, Vasi-vari, Tregami, Kalasha-ala, Hindko, Shughni, Munji, Ishkashimi and Qizilbash.
(Americans who have an opinion about anything related to Afghanistan are invited to write a brief essay about each of those tribes!)
The many ethnic minorites of Afghanistan are mainly united by their national cuisine, in which fetal remains of dogs and bunnies are suspended in aspic and either baked or eaten raw.
And it’s just this unique combination of xenophobia, delicious food, mutual incomprehension and hostility among more than 30 ethnic minorities, and five-star accomodations that makes Afghanistan an eternally popular destination for military tourists!
Note: I gleaned most of the information in this essay from online sources in Brahui, a Dravidic language which originated in South India and gradually lost about 85% of its original vocabulary during 2000 years of exile in Afghanistan, and apart from the usual difficulties of translating hybrid-pidgin-gibberish, some additional inaccuracies may have been introduced by taqiyya, or taqiyah, which is either a short round cap or the Islamic practice of lying about more or less everything to avoid religious persecution.
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Unlike the famous example of Inuit languages which may include as many as 25 different words for “snow,” Brahui has undergone a systematic impoverishment during so many centuries of exile from its roots in South India, and the Brahui word which originally meant “feces” has radically expanded its domain as similar words were forgotten, until it now signifies almost any “stuff on the ground,” including feces, snow, grass, trees, small animals, and children.
I couldn’t tell it from the uterine horn of a rat.
More seriously, I apologize for jumping into my own ignorance in previous posts on Afghanistan.