Kunar is a province shaped by a single river. The Kunar, fed by the glaciers and snows of the Hindu Kush, enters Afghanistan from Chitral in northern Pakistan and flows south-west down a deep, narrow valley until it meets the Kabul River near Jalalabad. Close to nine tenths of the province is mountainous or hilly, and its upper slopes still carry some of Afghanistan’s rare natural conifer forests.
A river and its side valleys
The provincial capital, Asadabad, also known as Chaghasarai, stands where the Pech and Asmar rivers join the Kunar; further north the Landai Sin flows in at Barikot. Side valleys such as the Pech reach deep into the mountains towards Nuristan. As it enters Afghanistan the Kunar carries about ten cubic kilometres of water a year, and 21 large community canals lead it onto the valley fields. Almost all irrigation comes from such canals; springs, and a few karez channels in Marawara and Shigal districts, supply the rest. A small hydropower dam was built at Asadabad in the mid-1970s.
Kunar is one of only four provinces that still keep a significant cover of natural coniferous forest; the provincial agriculture department has counted some 54,000 hectares of woodland, though much timber has been felled over recent decades. On the higher hills, chilgoza pine nuts are gathered each autumn, in September and October, and are counted among the finest gifts at family gatherings.
On ancient roads
The valley has long been a passage between the plains of the Kabul River and Chitral in the heart of the Hindu Kush. Greek writers called its river the Euas, and in the winter of 327/326 BCE Alexander the Great campaigned here against a people the Greeks called the Aspasians. Nearby, according to the ancient accounts, lay a town called Nysa whose people claimed descent from followers of the god Dionysus; Alexander held a festival to celebrate the encounter before marching on to Massaga.
People and livelihoods
Almost all of Kunar’s people are Pashtun, and Pashto is spoken in more than nine out of ten villages. Smaller communities speak Pashai and Nuristani languages, while the Gujars and Mashwanis, seasonal herding groups, take their flocks to high summer pastures and return to the lower valley in winter.
Irrigated land yields two harvests a year: wheat, maize, rice, sugar cane, beans and vegetables, with orchards of grapes, oranges, walnuts, persimmons and guavas. In the high villages families grow beans and potatoes near the forest edge and keep goats, and in the side valleys of Pech Dara and Chapa Dara local miners dig for gemstones. Jalalabad is the main market for the valley’s produce.