X-Nico

13 unusual facts about Afghanistan


Central Pashto

Central Pashto has been developed by the National Radio & Television of Afghanistan and the Academy of Sciences of Kabul.

College of Islamic and Arabic Studies

College of Islamic and Arabic Studies, Afghanistan, American intelligence analysts characterize this as a jihadist safe house

Kharabat

Kharabat (Kabul), an old district of Kabul Afghanistan close by to "Hinduguzar" (quarter of Hindu and Sikhs)

Marja

Marja, Afghanistan, an unincorporated agricultural district in Nad Ali District, Helmand Province

Navy Ten Nautical Miler

In April 2010, race coordinators were contacted by Navy personnel serving in Farah, Afghanistan interested in running a satellite version of the race there.

Panam

Panam, Afghanistan, a village in Badakhshan Province in north-eastern Afghanistan

Qala i Naw

Qala i Naw, Afghanistan, provincial capital of Badghis Province in northwest Afghanistan

Siege of Herat

A siege of Herat refers to a protracted conflict against the city of Herat in Afghanistan, considered strategic in several military campaigns.

Strategy for Operation Herrick

Political Settlement. It is the UK's position that the realisation of a long term stability in Afghanistan is achieved through a political settlement that enables the population to 'feel that it’s their government, their country and that they have a role to play'.

It is the UK Governments position that the UK cannot disengage from Afghanistan and retains an active military presence (particularly Helmand province) because of the continued terrorist threat facing Britain and the world.

If the Taliban are allowed to undermine legitimate government in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, that would enable Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to have greater freedom and a sanctuary from which to train, plan and launch terrorist attacks across the world - and would have longer term implications for the credibility of NATO and the international community - and for the stability of both this crucial region and globally.

The US surge of additional troops, equipment and resources of 2009/10 into Southern Afghanistan, increased the ISAF presence within Helmand to 20,000 US Marines, with approx 8,000 UK forces.

Syed Ahmad Barelvi

Syed Ahmad was influenced by Shah Abdul Aziz, son of Shah Waliullah and toured Afghanistan and the areas occupied by the Sikhs raising the banner of jihad and rallying the Pashtun tribes to his banner.


Afghanistan–China relations

During the visit, the Chinese Premier and Vice Premier met with King Mohammad Zahir Shah of Afghanistan, and held respective talks with Prime Minister Mohammad Daud Khan, Vice Prime Minister Ali Mohammad and Vice Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mr. Mohammad Naim.

Afghanistani

Coined recently, the word Afghanistani is a wide-range title that reflects all citizens of Afghanistan with different races and backgrounds, rather than only referring to Pashtun people.

Arron Perry

This record was, in its turn, broken when, using an Accuracy International L115A3, British Corporal Craig Harrison killed two Taliban with consecutive shots at a distance of 2.47 kilometres (8120 ft) in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in November 2009.

Autonomous Government of Khorasan

Therefore, on August 11, 1921 the first battle took place between a detachment of Gendarmes in a village near Kariz on Afghanistan border and forces of Hazara chief Shuja al-Mulk.

Foreign relations of Afghanistan

By 2000, only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

Gender segregation and Islam

In 1998 activists from the National Organization for Women picketed Unocal's Sugar Land, Texas office, arguing that its proposed pipeline through Afghanistan was collaborating with "gender apartheid".

Ghazi Amanullah Khan International Cricket Stadium

Construction on the stadium began in March 2010 when the foundation stone was laid by Minister of Finance and president of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, Omar Zakhilwal.

Glaciers of Bhutan

The study, conducted by the Universities of California and Potsdam and published in the journal Nature Geoscience, was based on 286 glaciers along the Himalaya and Hindu Kush from Bhutan to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Glocal Forum

The WAF program is active in six pilot cities: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Asmara, Eritrea; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Kabul, Afghanistan; Kigali, Rwanda; and Nablus, Palestine and additional cities are expected to join in the coming years.

Greg Makowski

However, Makowski and his team mates were prevented from competing when President Carter boycotted the games after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Habis Abdulla al Saoub

According to the indictment, on October 17, 2001, Battle and al Saoub flew out of Portland International Airport en route to Afghanistan.

Hamidullah Khan

On 5 September 1925 at Peshawar, Nawab Hamidullah Khan married Maimoona Sultan Shah Banu Begum Sahiba (1900–1982), the great-great-granddaughter of Shah Shuja of Afghanistan.

Hindu Kush

The passes of the Paropamisus in the west are relatively low, averaging around 600 meters; the most well-known of these is the Sabzak between the Herat and Badghis provinces, which links the western and northwestern parts of Afghanistan.

Ismail Qasim Yar

Ismail Qasemyar was the chairman of the Emergency Loya Jirga (Grand Council) of 2002 in Afghanistan.

January 2010 attack in central Kabul

The January 2010 attack in central Kabul was a suicide attack which occurred in central Kabul, Afghanistan on January 18, 2010 when Taliban gunmen attacked the presidential palace and several government buildings.

Jawbreaker: The attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda

Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander (2005) is an autobiographical book by CIA agent Gary Berntsen describing the time he spent in Afghanistan at the beginning of the American campaign against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Jesse Samek

He is most notable as having had a U.S. Air Force camp named after him at the Kandahar Airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Kamra-e-faoree

It was outlawed when the Taliban as former rulers of Afghanistan banned photography, forcing photographers to hide or destroy their equipment.

Kandahar, Saskatchewan

Kandahar is a small hamlet on Highway 16 near Wynyard, Saskatchewan, Canada, named by Canadian Pacific Railway executives in the late 19th century for a British military victory in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Kharoti

The Nasher Clan of the Kharoti tribe is based in the Konduz Province in Northern Afghanistan, where they were exiled by the ruling Abdali/Durrani tribes.

Kunduz Province

Between one hundred and two-hundred thousand Tajiks and Uzbeks fled the conquest of their homeland by Russian Red Army and settled in northern Afghanistan.

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center

It is located near Landstuhl, Germany, and serves as the nearest treatment center for wounded soldiers coming from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Loretta Reynolds

She deployed the Group to Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan from March 2010 to March 2011, where the Group supported the efforts of I MEF FWD/Regional Command Southwest in Helmand Province.

Mahmud Khan

Shah Mahmud Khan (1890–1959), Prime Minister of Afghanistan, 1946–1953

Maidan Wardak Province

Maidan Wardak province is located in the Central (or Central East) region of Afghanistan; bordering Parwan to the Northeast, Kabul and Logar to the east, Ghazni to the south and Bamyan to the west.

Margaret Heffernan

Examining examples of willful blindness in the Catholic Church, the SEC, Nazi Germany, Bernard Madoff’s investors, BP’s safety record, the military in Afghanistan and the dog-eat-dog world of subprime mortgage lenders, the book demonstrates how failing to see—or admit to ourselves or our colleagues—the issues and problems in plain sight can ruin private lives and bring down corporations.

Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi

In 1965, he was elected to the Afghan parliament from his home district of Barak-i-Barak in Logar province representing the traditional religious scholars.As one of only a handful of religious scholars in the parliament, he took it upon himself to be a first line of defense against the Marxist deputies such as Babrak Karmal, Hafizullah Amin, Noor Ahad and Anahita Ratebzad and strongly opposed the Marxist movement in Afghanistan.

Mohammed Alim Khan

After four days of fighting, the emir’s citadel (Arc) was destroyed, the red flag was raised from the top of Kalyan Minaret, and the Emir Alim Khan was forced to flee to his base at Dushanbe (in present-day Tajikistan), and finally to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he died in 1944.

Musa Qala

The situation created a crisis for the ISAF forces in Afghanistan, on the very day that the British commanding officer General David Richards handed over charge of the ISAF team to an American, General Dan K. McNeill; MacNeil suggested that "surgical and deliberate" force would be used to evict the fighters from Musa Qala.

Najibullah Lafraie

Organizations that Dr Lafaie has been a member of, such as Jamiat Islami, have been criticised by groups such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan, and as a consequence Lafaie has been targeted by several of these groups.

Naseem Rana

In 2005, Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, one of Pakistan's top military scientist, wrote and published a book, titled "The Military Economy" providing the accounts of his military involvements in Afghanistan.

Operation In Their Boots

The OITB program, led by executive producer Richard Ray Perez, provided five Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with the opportunity to write, produce, and direct their own documentaries about veterans.

Project Thread

The men were initially asked to give Canadian interrogators the location of Osama bin Laden, despite the fact they protested that they had never had any contact with militants or been to Afghanistan.

Qazi Mohammad Obaidullah Alvi

His career as journalist played mostly in Islamabad and Karachi and he delivered lectures in Al Rashid University Karachi, Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad and Kabul University Afghanistan.

Quest: The History of Spaceflight

Representative articles have featured an unpublished chapter from the James Hansen authorized biography of Neil Armstrong regarding his involvement with the Space Shuttle Challenger accident investigation; the memoirs of Valentina Tereshkova, contributed directly by the first woman in space; Galileo and European interest in positioning and navigation satellites, military use of satellites in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and the U.S. chimpanzee in space efforts.

Relief International UK

Relief International runs a ‘Livestock for Life’ project in five districts of Peshawar, Afghanistan to prevent Zoonotic diseases.

Rita Meyer

Her final overseas assignment was as Mission Support Group Commander at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

Salma Sultan

Salma and Maimoona were great-great-granddaughter of Shah Shuja of Afghanistan.Salma did her schooling from Sultanpur, Madhya Pradesh.

Santos Cardona

Cardona and his Working Dog, a German Shepherd named "Zomie", were Killed In Action (KIA) February 28, 2009 in Uruzgan Province, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, when the vehicle he was riding in struck a buried Improvised Explosive Device.

Shamim Jawad

She serves on the Board of Trustees of the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), a private, not-for-profit institution of higher education in Afghanistan, offering internationally supported degree programs and education.

Strategy for Operation Herrick

The stalemate situation resulted in Southern Afghanistan in July 2009 being largely ungoverned by legitimate elected authority, it was instead governed by a shadow Taliban government.

Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County

Tashkurgan County is located in the eastern part of the Pamir Plateau, where the Kunlun, Kara Kunlun, Hindukush and Tian Shan mountains come together, at the borders with Afghanistan (Wakhan Corridor), Tajikistan (Gorno-Badakhshan Province) and Pakistan (Gilgit-Baltistan).

The Giant Buddhas

The Giant Buddhas is a documentary film by Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei about the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan in Afghanistan.

The Last Man on Planet Earth

During a war with Afghanistan, an incurable biological weapon called the "Y-bomb", which targets only the male Y-chromosome, is used and results in the eventual deaths of 97% of the world's men.

The Noon Gun

In 2006 it was broadcast on Tolo TV, the most popular liberal TV station in Kabul, Afghanistan (and also by the Bhutan Broadcasting Service, the only service to broadcast inside the Bhutanese border).

The Places in Between

Set at the same time as the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan after the events set in motion by 9/11, Stewart made the walk in the middle of winter, adding additional hardship as he passed through the mountainous Ghor and Koh-i-Baba regions and its many snow-bound passes and villages.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373

However, the resolution failed to define 'Terrorism', and the working group initially only added Al-Qaida and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan on the sanctions list.

United States vice-presidential debate, 2008

Pundits criticized Biden's omission of the general's name; he referred to him several times only as the "commanding general in Afghanistan," until it was discovered the General's name is in fact David D. McKiernan.

Unsuri

He is said to have been born in Balkh, today located in Afghanistan, and he eventually became a poet of the royal court, and was given the title Malik-us Shu'ara (King of Poets').