Keshem Kishim | |
---|---|
Coordinates: 36°48′23″N70°6′15″E / 36.80639°N 70.10417°E | |
Country | Afghanistan |
Province | Badakhshan Province |
District | Kishim |
Time zone | + 4.30 |
Keshem or Kishim is a town and seat of Kishim District in Badakhshan Province in north-eastern Afghanistan. [1] It lies on the road from Taloqan to Faizabad. [2]
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometres (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country's largest city and serves as its capital. As of 2021, Afghanistan's population is 40.2 million, composed of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Qizilbash, Aimak, Pashayi, Baloch, Pamiris, Nuristanis, and others.
Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. According to 2023 estimates, the population of Kabul was 5 million people. In contemporary times, the city has served as Afghanistan's political, cultural, and economical center, and rapid urbanisation has made Kabul the 75th-largest city in the world and the country's primate city.
Kandahar is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of 1,010 m (3,310 ft). It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the capital of Kandahar Province and the centre of the larger cultural region called Loy Kandahar. Kandahar is the founding city and spiritual center of the Taliban. Despite the capital of Afghanistan being Kabul, where the government administration is based, Kandahar is the seat of power in Afghanistan as the supreme leader and his spiritual advisers are based there. Kandahar has therefore been called the de facto capital of Afghanistan, though the Taliban maintain Kabul is the capital.
The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist and Pashtun nationalist militant political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown following the American invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 following the departure of most coalition forces, after nearly 20 years of insurgency, and currently controls all of the country. However, its government is not recognized by any country. The Taliban government has been criticized for restricting human rights in Afghanistan, including the right of women and girls to work and to have an education.
Pashtuns, also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Eastern Iranian ethnic group primarily residing in southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. They historically were also referred to as Afghans until the 1970s, after the term's meaning had become a demonym for members of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
Dari, also known as Dari Persian, is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the term officially recognised and promoted since 1964 by the Afghan government for the Persian language, hence it is known as Afghan Persian or Eastern Persian in many Western sources. As Professor Nile Green remarks "the impulses behind renaming of Afghan Persian as Dari were more nationalistic than linguistic" in order to create an Afghan state narrative. Apart from a few basics of vocabulary, there is little difference between formal written Persian of Afghanistan and Iran. The term "Dari" is officially used for the characteristic spoken Persian of Afghanistan, but is best restricted to formal spoken registers. Afghanistan's Persian-speaking population still prefer to call their language "Farsi," asserting that the term "Dari" has been imposed upon them by the dominant Pashtun ethnic group as an effort to detach Afghanistan from its deep-rooted cultural, linguistic, and historical connections with the wider Persian-speaking world, encompassing Iran, Tajikistan, and parts of Uzbekistan. It serves as the lingua franca for interethnic communications in Afghanistan.
The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Soviet-controlled Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the occupying forces of the Soviet Union, the DRA and allied paramilitary groups against the Afghan mujahideen, foreign fighters, and smaller groups of anti-Soviet Maoists. While the mujahideen were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of their support came from Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Combat took place throughout the 1980s, mostly in the Afghan countryside. The conflict led to the deaths of between 562,000 and 2,000,000 Afghans, while millions more fled from the country as refugees; most externally displaced Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan and in Iran. Approximately 6.5% to 11.5% of Afghanistan's erstwhile population of 13.5 million people is estimated to have been killed over the course of the conflict. The Soviet–Afghan War caused grave destruction throughout Afghanistan, and has also been cited by scholars as a significant factor that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, formally ending the Cold War.
Hamid Karzai is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth President of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from December 2004 to September 2014. He previously served as Chairman of the Afghan Interim Administration from December 2001 to July 2002. He is the chief (khān) of the Popalzai Durrani tribe of Pashtuns in Kandahar Province.
Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani.
The national flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, also used as the flag of the Taliban, consists of a white field with a black Shahada. It was adopted on 15 August 2021 with the victory of the Taliban in the 2001–2021 war. Since the Anglo-Afghan War of 1919, also known as the War of Independence, Afghanistan has used about 19 national flags, more than any other country in this period. The national flag had black, red and green colors most of the time during the period.
The Afghanistan men's national team represents Afghanistan in international cricket. Cricket has been played in Afghanistan since the mid-19th century, but it was only in the early 21st century that the national team began to enjoy success. The Afghanistan Cricket Board was formed in 1995 and became an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2001 and a member of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) in 2003. After nearly a decade of playing international cricket, on 22 June 2017, at an ICC meeting in London, full ICC Membership was granted to Afghanistan. Alongside Ireland, this took the number of Test cricket playing nations to twelve. It is the first country to ever achieve Full Member status after holding Affiliate Membership of the ICC.
The districts of Afghanistan, known as wuleswali are secondary-level administrative units, one level below provinces. The Afghan government issued its first district map in 1973. It recognized 325 districts, counting wuleswalis (districts), alaqadaries (sub-districts), and markaz-e-wulaiyat. In the ensuing years, additional districts have been added through splits, and some eliminated through merges. In June 2005, the Afghan government issued a map of 398 districts. It was widely adopted by many information management systems, though usually with the addition of Sharak-e-Hayratan for 399 districts in total. It remains the de facto standard as of late 2018, despite a string of government announcements of the creation of new districts.
Tishkan is one of the 29 districts of Badakhshan province in eastern Afghanistan. It was created in 2005 from part of Kishim District and is home to approximately 33,165 residents.
Kishim District is one of the 29 districts of Badakhshan province in eastern Afghanistan.The district capital is Mashhad. The district is located in the Keshem Valley, a primarily rural area on the western edge of the province, and is home to approximately 89,833 residents, making it the second most populous district of the province.
Farkhar District is a district of Takhar Province, Afghanistan. It is located southeast of Taloqan. The Khanabad River flows inside this valley. Around 99% of the people in Farkhar speak Persian. Farkhar has about 50,000 people and 75 villages.
Rustaq District is a district of Takhar Province, northern Afghanistan. The district centre is the town of Rostaq. As recently as 2020, the district was considered to be under government control, as opposed to control by the Taliban. However, the district has had issues with illegal armed men.
The War in Afghanistan was an armed conflict from 2001 to 2021. It began when an international military coalition led by the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate and establishing the internationally recognized Islamic Republic three years later. The conflict ultimately ended with the 2021 Taliban offensive, which overthrew the Islamic Republic, and re-established the Islamic Emirate. It was the longest war in the military history of the United States, surpassing the length of the Vietnam War (1955–1975) by approximately 6 months.
The Islamic State–Taliban conflict is an ongoing armed conflict between the Islamic State and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The conflict escalated when militants who were affiliated with Islamic State – Khorasan Province killed Abdul Ghani, a senior Taliban commander in Logar province on 2 February 2015. Since then, the Taliban and IS-KP have engaged in clashes over the control of territory, mostly in eastern Afghanistan, but clashes have also occurred between the Taliban and IS-KP cells which are located in the north-west and south-west.
A military offensive by the Taliban insurgent group and allied militants led to the fall of the Kabul-based Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the end of the nearly 20-year War in Afghanistan that had begun following the United States invasion of the country. The Taliban victory had widespread domestic and international ramifications regarding human rights and proliferation of terrorism. The offensive included a continuation of the bottom-up succession of negotiated or paid surrenders to the Taliban from the village level upwards that started following the February 2020 US–Taliban deal.
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was a presidential republic that ruled Afghanistan from 2004 to 2021. The state was established to replace the Afghan interim (2001–2002) and transitional (2002–2004) administrations, which were formed after the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan that had toppled the partially recognized Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. However, on 15 August 2021, the country was recaptured by the Taliban, which marked the end of the 2001–2021 war, the longest war in US history. This led to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, led by President Ashraf Ghani, and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate under the control of the Taliban. The United Nations still recognizes the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Afghanistan instead of the Islamic Emirate, the de facto ruling government. The US–Taliban deal, signed on 29 February 2020 in Qatar, was one of the critical events that caused the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Following the deal, the US dramatically reduced the number of air attacks and deprived the ANSF of a critical edge in fighting the Taliban insurgency, leading to the Taliban takeover of Kabul.