Sancharak District ( fa, سانچارک) or Sangcharak is a district of

Sar-e Pol Province Sar-e Pol, also spelled Sari Pul (Dari/Pashto: ), is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the north of the country. It borders Ghor and Bamyan to the south, Samangan to the east, Balkh and Jowzjan to the north, and Fary ...

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 ...

. Its center is the city of Tukzar or Tokzar. Sancharak district borders

Balkh Province Balkh (Dari: , ''Balx'') is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the north of the country. It is divided into 15 districts and has a population of about 1,509,183, which is multi-ethnic and mostly a Persian-speaking society. The c ...

in the east. Sancharak District's area is 1089 square kilometres.Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development of Afghanistan, NABDP, Development Programme of Sancharak District

Population

The population of Sancharak district is 87,670 people as of 2010. About 44,287

males Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization. A male organism cannot reproduce sexually without access to ...

and 43,383

females Female (symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females ...

.Afghanistan Provincial Development Plan, Provincial Profile of Sar-i-Pul, UNAMA
/ref>

History

In the 1980s, Turkic nationalist Pahlawan Ghaffar led a 2000-man militia in the district.

Economy

Agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...

represents the major source of income for three-quarters of the households in the district. The most important field crops grown in Sancharak district include

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

, alfalfa,

barley Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley p ...

and flax. The most common crops grown in

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

plots include

Grapes 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 ago, ...

(75%),

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

and nut trees like Almond and

Walnut A walnut is the edible seed of a drupe of any tree of the genus ''Juglans'' (family Juglandaceae), particularly the Persian or English walnut, '' Juglans regia''. Although culinarily considered a "nut" and used as such, it is not a true ...

(

Juglans Walnut trees are any species of tree in the plant genus ''Juglans'', the type genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are referred to as walnuts. All species are deciduous trees, tall, with pinnate leaves , with 5–25 leaflets ...

regia) (16%) and

vegetables Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems ...

(3%).United Nations System, Nutrition Information in Crisis Situations, Afghanistan
/ref>

Education

The overall

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, hum ...

rate in Sancharak district is 12%, however, while nearly one in five (18%) of men are literate this is true for just over one in twenty (6%) women. In the population aged between 15 and 24 the men have a slightly lower literacy rate (17.7%), and so do women (4.8%). On average 29% of children between 6 and 13 are enrolled in school, however the figure is around one-third of boys (30%) and one-sixth of girls (15%).Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Central Statistics Organization

Transport Infrastructure

The transport infrastructure in Sancharak is not well developed with only 18.2% of

roads A road is a linear way for the conveyance of traffic that mostly has an improved surface for use by vehicles (motorized and non-motorized) and pedestrians. Unlike streets, the main function of roads is transportation. There are many types of ...

in the district able to take car traffic in all

seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

, and two-thirds (65%) able to take car traffic in some seasons. In one-sixth (16.8%) of the province there are no roads at all.

References

External links

Naval Postgraduate School, Program for Culture and Conflict Studies, Afghanistan, Sar-e Pol ProvinceAfghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), Afghanistan Livelihood Trajectories: Evidence from Sar-i-PulVoice of Sancharak
{{Authority control Districts of Sar-e Pol Province