Paktia is a land of high basins and forested ridges south of Kabul. Its capital, Gardez, lies at about 2,300 metres in a wide basin enclosed by mountains, and the province’s ridges are dotted with forests of pine and juniper. Winters are cold and snowy, summers mild, and in most districts life follows the rhythm of a single short growing season.
Basins, passes and forests
Paktia’s mountains are south-eastern outliers of the Hindu Kush, cut by deep valleys and narrow passes and opening onto high plateaus. Gardez stands in a large basin watered by the Gardez river, on a plain broken by hills that once gave the town natural defences. Seasonal rivers and mountain streams provide only limited irrigation, so farmers combine watered fields with rain-fed land.
Conifer forests of pine and juniper grow on the higher slopes. In the border districts of Chamkani and Dand Patan the climate is mild enough for two harvests a year. Families gather pine nuts in the forests and sell them in local markets and across the border, and ancient remains are found in districts such as Zurmat and Mirzaka.
Gardez through the centuries
Gardez has a long recorded history. In the early Islamic centuries it was the seat of a small Kharijite principality that lasted about 150 years, until its ruler submitted to the Saffarid Ya‘qub b. Layth in 870. Gardez soon became part of the Ghaznavid empire, was taken by the Ghurid Mu‘izz al-Din Muhammad in 1162, and in Mughal times was known for its houses of several storeys.
The town lives on in the name of Abu Sa‘id Gardizi, an eleventh-century Persian historian whose Zayn al-akhbar, dedicated to the Ghaznavid sultan ‘Abd al-Rashid around 1049–52, is a valuable source on the Persian kings, early Islamic history and the peoples of Central Asia. Older still is a stone image of Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god, found at Gardez and bearing an inscription that names a Shahi king called Khingala; it is generally dated to around the sixth or seventh century and is now kept at a Hindu shrine in Kabul.
People and livelihoods
Paktia’s people are overwhelmingly Pashtun, with the Zadran, Mangal, Ahmadzai and Tanai among the best-known tribes, and Pashto is almost universal. Gardez itself was long more mixed: the 1979 census found a mainly Dari-speaking Tajik town, with Hindu and Sikh merchants among its shopkeepers. The local attan, danced to the dhol drum, has a quicker rhythm and heavier beat than the southern style.
Farmers grow wheat, maize, rice, potatoes, kidney beans and onions, and keep orchards of apples, apricots, grapes and walnuts, selling their produce in local markets and in Pakistan. Kuchi herders spend the summer around Gardez, Zurmat and neighbouring districts and move down to warmer Khost for the winter, and many families have relatives working in Arab countries.