How The ‘Afghan Cameleer’ Campaign Accidentally Hides Diversity
the word Afghan is used in a contemporary sense to refer to someone from Afghanistan. However, this has not always been the case. For hundreds of years, Afghan as a term was primarily used by Persian speakers to describe another ethnic community, known as the Pashtuns (also called the Pakhtuns and Pathans). In the twenty-first century, the Pashtuns made up the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, yet more Pashtuns live in Pakistan, particularly in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the North Western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Karachi. The reason I provide this background is because the Pashtuns along with the Baloch (another ethnic group found in South Asia and Iran), probably played the most significant role in non-Aboriginal explorations of the Australian outback in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as cameleers. For example, the most famous cameleer, Bejah Dervish, was a Baloch.
via https://newmatilda.com/2016/06/13/how-the-afghan-cameleer-campaign-accidentally-hides-diversity/