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 republic in Central Asia and one of the poorest countries in the world. It is an ancient country and famously ungovernable, with a long and difficult relationship with its neighbour Pakistan. Perhaps because of their shared Pashtun heritage, the Kabul government also maintains close relations with the Soviet Union to balance Pakistani influence over its politics. It has benefitted from new Soviet roads, dams and schools in the northern provinces, most of which have been built since the 1950s, although Mehran still effectively regards it as a Pakistani client state. It has also kept a British consular presence in Kabul since the nineteenth century, despite having no other ties with Britain.
Afghanistan has a weak central government, further diminished by tribal factionalism, and has struggled to establish control beyond Kabul and the provincial capitals. The rest of the country is run by tribal councils and local commanders. Its ethnic divisions are severe, with Pashtuns in the south and east, Tajiks the north and most of the civil service, Uzbeks the northwest, and the Hazara of the central highlands. Among them, the Hazara are most excluded and often persecuted along religious lines. It is a deeply Islamic country (mostly Sunni) and its ostensibly secular institutions retain a religious character.
The country exports wheat, cotton, fruit and opium (much of which is grown in Helmand and reaches Europe through Mehran). It is also famous for its massive untapped mineral wealth, primarily copper and lithium in the north, which has attracted foreign interest for a century and is still largely unexploited.