Afghanistan became a unified entity in the mid-1700s, a poor and underdeveloped country in a very rough neighborhood. Its size, shape, and degree of centralized power depended on leaders who, like President Karzai, were often from the Durrani confederation of southern Pashtuns, and whose biggest and toughest rivals were often the Ghilzai, or eastern Pashtuns, who were famous for their rebelliousness and martial spirit