Population

By the mid-1980s millions of refugees had fled their rural homes to reside in cities or had left Afghanistan entirely for Pakistan, Iran, and other countries. In late 1985 two world situations produced large numbers of refugees-famine in Sub-Saharan Africa and insurgencies in Latin America. Nevertheless, it was the conflict in Afghanistan that produced the largest refugee population in the world. Estimates of the number of refugees in Pakistan, the home of most exiled Afghans, varied widely, and no reliable figure existed in 1985. Many experts accepted the figure of 2.5 to 3 million refugees in Pakistan and up to 1.9 million Afghans in Iran. Possibly 150,000 Afghans had emigrated to other countries, including the United States. The lack of accurate censuses of the refugee population, however, makes these figures extremely problematic (see Refugees, this ch.).

Before the Soviet intervention, there had been only one official census, which was carried out in 1979. Some scholars have raised questions about the validity of this census because it was conducted in three weeks, from June 15 to July 4, and only 55 to 60 percent of the settled population was counted because of armed conflict in the remainder of the country. The census reported a settled population of 13 million and estimated an additional 2.5 million nomads, for a total population of 15.5. million. The Afghan Statistical Yearbook published in 1983 provides a total population figure of 15.96 million for the 1981-82 year, based on projections from the 1979 census figures. This figure presumably includes those citizens who have left the country. The authors estimate that 13.8 million, or 84 percent of the population, were settled, and 2.16 million, or 16 percent of the population, were nomadic in 1981-82. They estimate that only 15.8 percent of the population lived in urban areas and that about 48 percent of that urban population lived in Kabul.

The population projections were calculated using a growth rate of 2.6 percent for the total population. The growth rate for the urban population was estimated to be 4.7 percent and the growth rate for the rural population 2.3 percent, reflecting migration to urban centers. The estimated sex ratio (number of males per 100 females in the population) was about 106 males in the total population, 109 in the urban population, and 105 in the rural population.

An earlier unofficial census was carried out in 1972-74, for which the interviewing occurred during 1972﷓73, in cooperation with the Afghan government. The census was sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (AID) and was conducted jointly through the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and The Johns Hopkins University. Although this survey is generally well respected, it did not cover the entire country but relied on careful sampling techniques. The reported 1972-73 figures were 10,020,600 settled people; the nomadic population was not surveyed. The sex ratio was 116 males per 100 females.
The overall sex ratio in most countries of the world gives females a slight advantage over males. The high ratio of males to females in Afghanistan is startling, even given the expected underreporting of females in a conservative Islamic society. Graham B. Kerr, SUNY Buffalo demographer, accounts for the skewed gender distribution in two ways: a higher than usual underreporting of females and a high rate of maternal mortality. An interesting datum of this survey was the reported trend of increasing migration to cities from the countryside, which antedates the advent of a Marxist-Leninist government in 1978.
The AID survey found the crude birth rate (number of births per 1,000 people) to be 20.8 and the infant mortality rate (number of deaths per 1,000 infants) to be 184.0. The mortality figures are extraordinarily high and it is not surprising that the survey's authors calculated the average life expectancy at birth to be an astonishingly low 34.6 in 1973-74. Finally, the research team calculated the annual growth rate at 2.2 percent.
Experts in 1985 provided various estimates of the country's population; all of these estimates were, of course, based on the earlier censuses. The Population Reference Bureau, a respected nonprofit agency in Washington, D.C., estimated the population at 14.7 million people, including refugees, whereas the United States Bureau of the Census used the same figure of 14.7 million but excluded refugees. The Population Reference Bureau's figure is significantly lower than the Afghan government's 1983 estimate of 15.5 million (see table 4, Appendix).
In 1985 the United States Bureau of the Census and the Population Reference Bureau provided other current demographic figures for Afghanistan. Both groups, however, cautioned that the figures were based on data so unreliable as to constitute little more than educated guesses. The life expectancy at birth cited by the Population Reference Bureau was among the lowest in the world, and the infant mortality rate was the highest in the world. These figures reflected not only the political situation but also the lack of adequate health care facilities in most of the country.
Figures for population movement within the country were also unreliable. Kabul seems to have received the largest number of refugees from the countryside, but other major cities, such as Jalalabad, also absorbed many refugees. In the 1979 census report the population of Kabul was listed at 913,164 people. By mid-1985 unconfirmed reports placed the population of Kabul at over 2 million. The sudden influx of rural dwellers who sought to share residences with urban relatives resulted in overcrowding and pressure on city-provided services.

This page maintained by Luke Griffin and last updated on 01/14/2002 .