Dir District

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dir is an area in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. Dir is administratively subdivided into Upper Dir and Lower Dir districts. Dir district is 5,280 square kilometres in area and part of the Malakand Division, lying along the Afghanistan border between Chitral and Peshawar. Almost all of it lies in the valley of the Panjkora which rises high in the Hindu Kush at Lat. 35.45 and joins the Swat River near Chakdara, where the district is usually entered, at Lat. 34.40. Apart from the tehsils of Adenzai around Chakdara and Munda in the southwest, Dir is rugged and mountainous with peaks rising to 16,000 feet (4877 metres) in the northeast and to 10,000 feet (3048 m) along the watersheds with Swat to the east and Afghanistan to the west. The only motor road to Chitral reaches 10,234 feet (3119 m) at the Lowarai Pass. Timergara, however, the district headquarters, lies at only 2,700 feet (823 m), twice the altitude of Peshawar but much lower than the traditional and eponymous capital of Dir at the foot of the Lowarai. Except for them and a number of rapidly growing bazaar towns along the main roads the population is rural, scattered in more than 1200 villages over the plains of Adenzai and Munda and the deep narrow valleys of the Panjkora and its tributaries. Of these the largest are Barawal, Usherai, Nihag, Karo and Toormang. Dir district was officially split into Upper Dir and Lower Dir in 1996. Until 2000 as funds were not available to provide the accommodation needed at Dir town by government depart­ments at a district headquarters, both districts continued to he administered by a single deputy Commissioner stationed at Timergara.