Most Syrians think of themselves as Syrian, yet they are in civil war. Same with Lebanon. Same with Iraq. How does one square the idea of an Iraq national identity when the Kurds have a semi-autonomous enclave and when, just a few years ago, there were active campaigns of sectarian cleansing?
So, I'm not saying national identity doesn't exist, I'm saying that on many matters other identities trump national identity. For Afghanistan, the various groups talk about one Afghanistan, but their ideas about how that one Afghanistan should be organized and who should control the levels of power vary widely. If you look, for instance, at voting patterns in Afghanistan they highly correlate to ethnic and/or sectarian identity.
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