Pashto is similar to other Aryan (Iranian) languages, particularly Dari and Farsi, as they all belong to the Indo-European language family. While Dari and Farsi are considered dialects of the same language, Pashto is a distinct language within the Iranian branch.
Although Pashto, Dari, and Farsi all employ the Arabic alphabet, it's crucial to note that they are fundamentally different from the Arabic language itself. Their similarities stem from shared ancestry within the Indo-European language family and some degree of lexical borrowing over centuries.