Mr. Ghani’s two children live in the United States. The families of his vice presidents reside in Turkey and Iran. The family of Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s chief executive, is in India. The families of the top cabinet ministers, presidential advisers, deputy ministers and even some agency directors all live abroad.

A senior official close to Mr. Ghani acknowledged that “it would be symbolically helpful” if fewer officials in the government had families living abroad, but he said that it was the reality of a country that for decades has had one of the biggest refugee populations in the world.

“In a majority of developing countries, you find that an interesting number of high-ranking government officials are dual citizens,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid angering colleagues. “It’s not that it’s a best practice, but an acknowledgment of a sad reality.”

The saturation of the top ranks of the Afghan government with officials whose families live abroad has been a theme throughout the war.

In 2010, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then the commander of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, raised the issue in an emotional meeting of President Hamid Karzai’s national security council as one reason he thought the war had lost focus and could not be won easily, according to notes of the meeting shared by one Afghan official at the meeting and confirmed by another.

“My father is 86, and he has a nephew fighting in Khost and another in Shindand,” General McChrystal said at the meeting. He added, “General Parker’s son lost his leg in Helmand,” referring to his British deputy, Gen. Nick Parker, whose son had two legs amputated after a roadside bombing. (In an email, General Parker said he had not been at the meeting himself but was later told about it by General McChrystal.)

General McChrystal then followed up with a question for the Afghan ministers at the table: “How many of you high-ranking Afghan officials have sons on the battleground?”