Khost lies in a sheltered bowl in Afghanistan’s far south-east, lower and warmer than the highlands around it. The provincial capital, also called Khost and known locally as Matun, sits at about 1,225 metres, and — unusually for Afghanistan — the valley receives a large share of its yearly rain from the South Asian monsoon. Wooded ridges along the borders with Paktia and Pakistan frame a plain of irrigated and rain-fed fields.
The Khost Bowl
Geographers speak of the “Khost Bowl”: a valley floor enclosed by mountains, with rangelands running from Gurbuz in the south to Jaji Maidan in the north. The Khost valley and the Bak area are the farming heart of the province, where crops are grown both on irrigated land and with rain alone.
Winters here are mild compared with the surrounding highlands. Average temperatures range from about 5 °C in January to about 27 °C in July, and annual rainfall is around 475 millimetres, much of it brought in summer by moist winds that enter the valley through its opening to the south-east. The border with Pakistan lies about 40 kilometres east of the city.
Pine forests and pine nuts
Natural forests run along the borders with Pakistan and Paktia. Here grows the chilgoza pine, whose small, rich nuts are among the province’s best-known exports. A study of chilgoza forests in eastern Afghanistan, published in 2018, surveyed stands in Khost’s Musakhel and Qalandar districts; in some places the trees are tended almost like an orchard for their nuts, while elsewhere they are also cut for firewood.
Heart of Loya Paktia
Khost is the largest city of Loya Paktia, “Greater Paktia”, a historical region of the south-east. In the 1920s Khost was one of four sub-districts of the Southern Province, the Hukumat-e Ala-ye Janubi, along the border with British India; it became a province in its own right much later.
The valley has known turbulent times: uprisings broke out here in 1856–57, in 1912 and in 1924–25. The last, known as the Khost or Mangal rebellion, is now studied as a significant episode in Afghanistan’s early encounter with modernisation.
People and everyday life
The population is almost entirely Pashtun, from tribes and communities such as the Khostwal, Mangal, Zadran, Waziri, Sulaimankhel and Kharoti, and Pashto is the language of daily life. Cricket is hugely popular, and several players of Afghanistan’s national team come from Khost. The city is also a busy trading town, with the Ghulam Khan border crossing about 32 kilometres to the south, and home to a university. The province itself is divided into 13 districts.