Arghandab (

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...

/ fa, ارغنداب) is a

district A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...

in the central part of

Kandahar Province Kandahār ( ps, ; Kandahār, prs, ; ''Qandahār'') is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southern part of the country, sharing a border with Pakistan, to the south. It is surrounded by Helmand in the west, Uruzgan ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

. It borders Panjwai and Khakrez districts to the west,

Shah Wali Kot District Shah Wali Kot District ( ps, شاه ولي کوټ ولسوالۍ, fa, ولسوالی شاه ولی کوت) is situated in the northern part of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. It borders Khakrez District to the west, Naish District and Oruzgan P ...

to the north and east and

Kandahar District Kandahar District or Dand District is situated in the central part of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, surrounding the city of Kandahar. It borders Panjwai District to the west, Arghandab District to the north, Shah Wali Kot District to the northe ...

to the east and south. The population, as of 2006, was 54,900. The district centre is Arghandab, located northwest of

Kandahar Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a List of cities in Afghanistan, city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population ...

. The

Arghandab River Arghandab is a river in Afghanistan, about in length. It rises in Ghazni Province, west of the city of Ghazni, and flows southwest passing near the city of Kandahar, and then joins the Helmand River below Grishk. In its lower course, it is mu ...

flows through the district in its eastern part West from the district center, and the area is irrigated by the

Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority The Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority (HAVA) based in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, originally named the Helmand Valley Authority (HVA) until its expansion in 1965,(pdf) The Helmand Valley Project in Afghanistan: A.I.D. Evaluation Special Study No. 18
C Clapp-Wicek & E Baldwin, U.S. Agency for International Development, published December 1983 The climate, river and irrigation allow the inhabitants to aggregate several different forms of produce. The main agricultural crops in this region are

pomegranate The pomegranate (''Punica granatum'') is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub in the family Lythraceae, subfamily Punicoideae, that grows between tall. The pomegranate was originally described throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean re ...

grape A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus '' Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years a ...

s, plums, and ''

Cannabis sativa ''Cannabis sativa'' is an annual herbaceous flowering plant indigenous to Eastern Asia, but now of cosmopolitan distribution due to widespread cultivation. It has been cultivated throughout recorded history, used as a source of industrial fibe ...

''.

War in Afghanistan

The district was the site of the Battle of Arghandab in June 2008. On 16 November 2009,

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...

attackers raided a police station, killing eight officers and wounding three. Three other police officers in the station disappeared, and a spokesman for the Kandahar governor's office, who asked not to be identified by name, said he was not sure if the officers who disappeared had a connection to the Taliban. On 9 June 2010, a suicide attack at a wedding party in the village of

Nagahan The Nagahan wedding bombing was a suicide bombing on a wedding party, which occurred on 9 June 2010 at around 21:00 local time (16:30 GMT) in the village of Nagahan in Arghandab District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. The attack killed at l ...

of the Arghandab district killed at least 40 people and wounded 77, making it one of the worst attacks of the year. From November 2020, there have been multiple attempted takeovers of the district by Taliban. As of December 9, 2020, the district remains to be contested, with the Taliban believed to be occupying the area along the western bank and Afghan security forces believed to be occupying the eastern bank (including the Baba Wali Shrine). On December 24, 2020, Afghan forces recaptured the entirety of the district, killing 37 insurgents in the process.

References

{{Authority control Districts of Kandahar Province

War in Afghanistan

See also

References