Afghanistan
The population of Afghanistan was estimated at 29.2 million in 2017. Of this, 15 million are males and 14.2 million females. About 22% of them are urbanite and the remaining 78% live in rural areas. An additional 3 million or so Afghans are temporarily housed in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, most of whom were born and raised in those two countries. This makes the total Afghan population at around 33,332,025, and its current growth rate is 2.34%. This population is expected to reach 82 million by 2050 if current population trends continue.
Ethnic groups in Afghanistan
The Pashtuns (ethnic Afghans) make up the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, comprising between 38% and 42% of the country's population. Their main territory, sometimes called Pashtunistan, is between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in neighboring Pakistan, where they are the second largest ethnic group. After the rise of the Hotaki dynasty in 1709 and the Durrani Empire in 1747, Pashtuns expanded by forming communities north of the Hindu Kush and elsewhere in Afghanistan.
There are conflicting theories about the origin of the Pashtun people, both among historians and the Pashtun themselves. A variety of ancient groups with eponyms similar to "Pukhtun" have been hypothesized as possible ancestors of modern Pashtuns. The Greek historian Herodotus mentioned a people called "Pactyans", living in the Achaemenid's Arachosia Satrap as early as the 1st millennium BC. Since the 3rd century AD and onward they are mostly referred to by the ethnonym ""Afghan"", a name believed to be given to them by neighboring Persian people. Some believe that ethnic "Afghan" is an adaptation of the Prakrit ethnonym "Avagana", attested in the 6th century CE. It was used to refer to a common legendary ancestor known as ""Afghana"", propagated to be grandson of King Saul of Israel.