Kandahar Province
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kandahar (کندھار) | |
| Province | |
| Country |  Afghanistan |
|---|---|
| Capital | Kandahar |
| - coordinates | |
| Area | 54,022 km² (20,858 sq mi) |
| Population | 886,000 (2002) |
| Timezone | UTC+4:30 |
| Main language | Pashto |
 Map of Afghanistan with Kandahar highlighted
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Kandahar or Qandahar (Pashto: کندھار, Persian: قندهار) is one of the largest of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It is located in southern Afghanistan, between Helmand, Oruzgan and Zabul provinces. Its capital is the city of Kandahar, which is located on the Arghandab River. The province has a population of nearly 890,000, with over 300,000 living in its capital city. The main inhabitants of Kandahar province are the Pashtuns.
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[edit] Name
There is speculation about the origin of the name "Kandahar". It is believed that "Kandahar" may derive its name from Gandhara, an ancient kingdom along the modern Kashmir and Afghanistan border[1], and former satrapy of the Persian Empire.[2][3] It is suggested that people of Gandhara migrated south to Arachosia and transferred the name with them.[4] Alternatively, it is also believed that Kandahar bears Alexander's name from the Arabic and Persian rendering of "Alexander", which derives from Iskandariya for Alexandria.[5] A temple to the deified Alexander as well as an inscription in Greek and Aramaic by the emperor Ashoka, who lived a few decades later, have been discovered in the old citadel.[6]
[edit] History
For a more comprehensive history of the Kandahar Province, see the Kandahar City.
Kandahar, the city and province, dates back to the time of the Mahabharata, which dates back to 3,120BC Indo-Aryan era. Kandahar City was founded in the 4th century BC by Alexander of Macedon[citation needed], near the ancient city of Mundigak.[citation needed] The city has been a frequent target for conquest because of its strategic location in Asia, which connects Southern, Central and Southwest Asia. It was part of the Persian Achaemenid empire before the Greek invasion in 330 B.C. It came under the influence of the Indian emperor Ashoka who erected a pillar there with a bilingual inscription in Greek and Aramaic.[7]
Under the Abbasids and later Turkic invaders, Kandahar converted to Islam. Kandahar would go on to be conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century, Turkic Ghaznavids in the 10th century, and Genghis Khan in the 13th century. Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of Afghanistan, gained control of the city and province in 1747 and made it the capital of his new Afghan Kingdom. In the 1770s, the capital was transferred to Kabul. Ahmad Shah Durrani's mausoleum is located somewhere in the center of the city.[8]
British-Indians forces occupied the province during the First Anglo-Afghan War from 1832 to 1842. They also occupied the city during the Second Anglo-Afghan War from 1878 to 1880. It remained peaceful for about 100 years until the late 1970s.
During the Soviet occupation of 1979 to 1989, Kandahar province witnessed many fighting between Soviet and local Mujahideen rebels. After the Soviet withdrawal the city fell to Gul Agha Sherzai, who became a powerful warlord and controlled the province.
At the end of 1994, the Taliban emerged from the area and set out to conquer the rest of the country. Since the removal of the Taliban in late 2001, Kandahar again came under the control of Gul Agha Sherzai. He was replaced in 2003 by Yousef Pashtun followed by Asadullah Khalid taking the post in 2005. The province is currently occupied by NATO forces, mostly by Canadians.
[edit] Government and administration
Gul Agha Sherzai was Governor of the province before and after the Taliban regime, until early 2004, when mounting criticism of his efforts led President Hamid Karzai to remove him from the post. For the last 250 years, mostly Pashtuns have been ruling Afghanistan. History shows that many Afghan rulers were from Kandahar, such as Ahmad Shah Durrani, Abdur Rahman Khan, Nadir Khan, Zahir Shah, Hamid Karzai, etc. Kandahar province is made up of 17 districts, and each district has its own Chief. The current Governor of the Kandahar Province is Asadullah Khalid.
The following is a list of the Districts of Kandahar Province:
- Arghandab
- Arghistan
- Daman
- Ghorak
- Kandahar (capital)
- Khakrez
- Maruf
- Maywand
- Miyannasheen
- Naish
- Panjwai
- Reg
- Shah Wali Kot
- Shorabak
- Spin Boldak
- Zhari
[edit] Economy
Kandahar had well-irrigated gardens and orchards and was famous for its grapes, melons, and pomegranates, but these were made inaccessible by land mines or destroyed outright in the conflict between the Soviets and the mujahideen, Islamic guerrilla fighters during the Soviet occupation. The city is of significant strategic importance in the region due to the major airport built in the early 1970s with development funding from the United States. The main source of trade is to Pakistan, Iran, and the United States. Kandahar is an agricultural state.
[edit] Transportation
Kandahar International Airport serves the population of southern Afghanistan, especially the Kandahar region, as a method of traveling to other domestic cities by air or to a number of nearby countries. The airport was built in the 1960s with US financial and technical assistance under the United States Agency for International Development program. Kandahar International Airport has been used by the NATO forces to deliver troops and humanitarian supplies since late 2001. The airport was severely damaged during the Soviet attacks on the city during 1979-89 and again during the US raids in late 2001. Repairs and upgrades also occurred during that period; the airport re-opened for civilian use in late 2006.[9]
Kandahar province has bus services to major towns or village headquarters. It's capital, Kandahar, has a public bus system that take commuters on daily routes to many destinations throughout the city. Besides the buses, there are yellow and white taxicabs that provides transportation service inside the city as well as throughout the province. Other traditional methods of ground transportation are also used. Private vehicles are on the rise in Kandahar, with large show rooms selling new or second hand vehicles imported from the United Arab Emirate. More people are buying new cars as the roads and highways are being improved.
[edit] Education
Efforts to improve education in Afghanistan are severely hampered without books, which are in short supply. Lack of funding and political will has led to only small gains since the fall of the Taliban. Education has moved somewhat upward in the rest of the country, but southern states, like Kandahar, have seen slow to no progress because of the continued fighting and instability of the region. In 2006 alone, almost 150 educational institutes have closed in Kandahar province alone, according to the education ministry. Regionally more than 50 schools have been attacked this year. Over 60,000 students cannot attend school because of the risk of attack.[10]
Kandahar University is the largest college or university in the province. In partnership with the Asia Foundation, the Kandahar University conducted a pilot project that provided female high school graduates with a four-month refresher course to prepare for the college entrance examination. Kandahar University, for example, currently has an enrollment of six women and 1,094 men.[11] All of the 24 women who sat for the exam passed and have been admitted to universities to study medicine, engineering, economics, law, and agriculture. The university is only one of two universities in Kandahar that serve all of southern Afghanistan. The conditions in the university are extremely poor, with no water, limited power, and a closed library. The structures of the University are very weak and unsafe. The university is far behind the universities of the North because of the violence, the two universities in southern Afghanistan also receive very limited funding.
[edit] References
- ^ Gandara...Link
- ^ W. Vogelsang, "Gandahar", in The Circle Of Ancient Iranian Studies
- ^ E. Herzfeld, "The Persian Empire: Studies on Geography and Ethnography of the Ancient Near East", ed. G. Walser, Wiesbaden 1968, pp. 279, 293-94, 336-38, 345
- ^ Bosworth, C.E. (1999). "Kandahār". Encyclopaedia of Islam (CD-ROM Edition v. 1.0). Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV.
- ^ Alexander the Great: his towns - Alexandria in Arachosia...Link
- ^ Ashoka's Rock Edicts...Link
- ^ The Book Rags of Kandahar... Link
- ^ The Book Rags of Kandahar... Link
- ^ Pajhwok Afghan News - AAA begins flights for Kandahar... Link
- ^ The Global Exchange: Afghan Schools in Danger...Link
- ^ The Asian Foundation...Link
[edit] Further reading
- Vogelsang, W. (1985). Early historical Arachosia in South-east Afghanistan; Meeting-place between East and West.
- Dupree, Louis. (1973) Afghanistan. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Rashid, Ahmed. (2000) Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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