Afghanistan is a landlocked country situated between the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. Historically its location has made it important, connecting Asia with the Western World. For centuries this area experienced migrations, invasions and trade by outsiders.
With an area of 251,773 square miles (647,500 square kilometers) which is about the size of Texas, Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan on the east and south; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan on the north; Iran on the west; and China in the extreme northeast. The capital of Afghanistan is Kabul.
Afghanistan's population was estimated as 31,056,997 in 2006. Afghanistan has more than a dozen different tribal groups of which the Pashtuns is the largest group making up nearly 40 percent of the population. The official languages are Pushtu and Dari which is an Afghan form of Persian also known as Farsi.
Although Afghanistan is not an Arab country, most Afghans belong to the Sunni branch of Islam.
Afghanistan was a monarchy from 1747 to 1973, when the king, Zahir Shah, was overthrown by military officers and the country was proclaimed a republic; the republic dissolved in 1992 as the country erupted in civil war.
In June 2002 a multiparty republic replaced an interim government that had been established in December 2001, following the fall of the Islamic Taliban government. On December 7, 2004, Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan by a nationwide poll.
Afghanistan's monetary unit is the afghani.
Web Sites
- CIA: The World Factbook
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- The Library of Congress
- U.S. State Department
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