The article examines the internal political and ethnoconfessional situation in Afghanistan on the eve of the entry of Soviet troops into this country on December 27, 1979. The dominant influence on the intra-Afghan processes of ethnicity, first of all, the Pashtun factor. This factor is based on traditional genus tribal relations, historically developed among the Pashtuns, who are the state-forming people of Afghanistan. Ignoring ethnic features of Afghan Muslims, especially the synthesis of the Pashtun nationalism, their customary law (Pashtunwalai) and traditional forms existence of Islam by external forces leads to negative for them consequences. It is not for nothing that Afghanistan is called the “graveyard of empires”. Examples from Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and now the United States convincingly confirm this thesis.
Afghanistan, confession, Islam, Islamism, tribes, Pashtuns, ethnic groups.