With some 60,000 Afghan immigrants living in Northern California, it’s no wonder that residents in Fremont — home to the largest segment of Afghan Americans in the Bay Area — joyfully dub that city as “Little Kabul.” The community began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Soviets began invading Afghanistan, a landlocked mountainous country of approximately 252,000 square miles, slightly smaller than Texas.

Fleeing the communist regime, many Afghans came to settle in the United States as refugees. Immigration continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and today New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles follow the Bay Area as the cities with the largest Afghan populations in the country. The United States itself ranks third in the list of countries that Afghans have immigrated to. Pakistan comes first with about two million Afghan residents, followed by Iran, which has a population of about one million Afghans.

At home in the Bay Area, Afghan Americans are prominent members of society. Catching the bus for school, opening store windows in the morning, mowing the lawn, watching TV or refinancing their homes are all parts of the American lifestyle this community has adopted. But it still keeps its national and Islamic roots firm by celebrating traditional weddings and festivities, and by attending religious activities such as Jumuma — a special prayer service on Fridays — which is mandatory for men and optional for women.

Recent world events have put a spotlight on this community, with the Bay Area being a fertile ground for Afghan Americans who want to help restructure a country they left behind years ago.