ABSTRACT
Long recognised as the most important language of British India’s North-West Frontier Province – now Pakistan’s province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) – where it is spoken by 73 per cent of the population according to the 1998 census, Pashto was by royal decree of 1936 also declared to be the national language of Afghanistan in place of Dari Persian. This official pre-eminence was artificial, however, and it now shares the honour with Dari. In Afghanistan Pashto is largely spoken in the eastern (Nangarhar, Laghman, Kunar), central (Kabul, Logar, Wardak), south-eastern (Ghazni, Khost, Paktiya, Paktika), south-western (Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzgan, Zabul), and western (Herat, Farah) regions. In Pakistan, in addition to the KP Province, it is primarily spoken in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, including Waziristan; and in north-eastern Balochistan, including the city of Quetta. There are also reported to be communities of Pashto-speaking migrant laborers from both Afghanistan and Pakistan in Iran and the United Arab Emirates, and small populations of Pashto speakers have been documented in Tajikistan. With recent political upheavals even more have migrated to the West, including Western Europe and North America.
