This article examines Afghan communities outside of Afghanistan as deeply heterogeneous and fragmented groups of migrants. The primary sources for the study are interviews with Afghan immigrants conducted in 2023 in Russia and 2025 in Italy, Germany, and Austria (a total of 37). The analysis also draws on the results of similar studies conducted by European and Afghan researchers in Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, and Australia. The analytical lens is the term “a cluster of configurations” proposed by German researcher Carolin Fischer, which allows us to see this community of compatriots as divided along ethnic, political, ideological, and other lines, sometimes united only formally by citizenship. The article demonstrates that while intra-Afghan Cold War-era contradictions and traditional religious differences play a minor role in the life of the diaspora, ethnicity and stances on radical Islam are the cause of a high degree of endogamy and conflict within the diaspora. This raises the question of the appropriateness of using the term “Afghan diaspora” as such to refer to the aggregate of conflicting groups of migrants from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, migration, diaspora, ethno-political conflicts, Afghan refugees, Afghan diaspora, transportation of conflict, imagined communities