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108-561: Khakrez District is a rural agrarian community with a population of more than 20,000 located in north-central Kandahar Province . A village known variously as Khakrez or Darvishan, at the base of mountains in the western part of the district, is the location of the district center building and the Shah Agha Shrine or Shah Maqsud Shrine , one of the oldest historical Islamic sites in Afghanistan. The district borders Ghorak District to

216-557: A diploma . Almost 150 educational institutes were closed in the past, according to the education ministry. Some of the well known public schools in Kandahar are Ahmad Shah Baba High School, Mahmud Tarzi High School, Mirwais Hotak High School, Nazo Ana High School, Shah Mahmud Hotak High School, and Zarghuna Ana High School. Private schools include Afghan Turk High Schools . Asia Asia ( / ˈ eɪ ʒ ə / AY -zhə , UK also / ˈ eɪ ʃ ə / AY -shə )

324-500: A South Asian country, emerges as one of the world's fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements. Its present life expectancy is 25 years longer than in the 1970s. More than four of every five children of school age in Nepal now attend primary school, compared to just one in five 40 years ago. Hong Kong ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 7 in

432-467: A Taliban-claimed shooting. The vote eventually took place, peacefully. In 2021, as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan , a Taliban offensive started taking over Afghanistan. On May 1, the U.S. withdrew from Kandahar, and the Taliban started taking nearby districts to Kandahar city. The fighting displaced 150,000 people living nearby. They took the city on August 12. Following this, women and girls in

540-519: A city bus service that took commuters on daily routes to different destinations throughout the city. There are taxicabs that provide transportation service inside the city as well as throughout the province. Other traditional methods of ground transportation are also used. Private vehicles are on the rise in the country, with large showrooms selling new or second-hand vehicles imported from the United Arab Emirates . More people are buying new cars as

648-659: A major hub for outsourcing. Trade between Asian countries and countries on other continents is largely carried out on the sea routes that are important for Asia. Individual main routes have emerged from this. The main route leads from the Chinese coast south via Hanoi to Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur through the Strait of Malacca via the Sri Lankan Colombo to the southern tip of India via Malé to East Africa Mombasa (see also: Indo-Pacific ), from there to Djibouti , then through

756-567: A marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος . The term was later adopted by the Romans , who used it in reference to the province of Asia , located in western Anatolia. One of the first writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny . The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia , South Asia , Southeast Asia , Central Asia , and West Asia . The coastal periphery

864-629: A new Taliban insurgency fought against the U.S. and NATO, mostly in Kandahar and Helmand Province. At the same time, the U.S. was searching for Osama bin Laden . Arrested terrorists or suspected terrorists were sent from the Kandahar detention center to the Guantanamo Bay naval base . Afghans detained by Canadian troops were handed over to Afghan's intelligence police, the National Directorate of Security , who (without Canadian knowledge) tortured

972-623: A response to the September 11 attacks , the United States and NATO (aided by the Northern Alliance ) invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban. This began the War on Terror . Initially, it was an air war, and included the bombing of multiple targets near Kandahar city's airport . On the 20th, the war's first ground operation began with a U.S. commando raid near the airport, which the Taliban claimed

1080-551: A second language is promoted in public schools. The main tribes in the province are as follows: In 1914 Kandahar was divided into the following districts: Today the province is divided into the following administrative divisions: The Ahmad Shah Baba International Airport is located east of the city of Kandahar. It is for civilian and military use. It serves the population of southern Afghanistan by providing domestic flights to other cities and international flights to Dubai, Pakistan, Iran and other regional countries. The airport

1188-580: A short-lived subah (imperial province) from the 1638 conquest until its loss in 1648 to one of the Safavids' rivals. Starting in 1709, Mir Wais Hotak rebelled against the Safavids and established the Hotaki dynasty , which became a powerful empire. In 1729, Nader Shah declared war on the Ghilzai rulers. By 1738, the last Hotaki ruler Shah Hussain was defeated in what is now Old Kandahar . Ahmad Shah Durrani ,

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1296-399: Is a region where various independent cultures coexist rather than sharing a single culture, and the boundary between Europe is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity . The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural differences, some of which vary on a spectrum. China and India traded places as the largest economies in

1404-1063: Is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains , and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression ) and the Caspian and Black Seas . It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean , on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Asia is subdivided into 49 countries, five of them ( Georgia , Azerbaijan , Russia , Kazakhstan and Turkey ) are transcontinental countries lying partly in Europe . Geographically, Russia

1512-506: Is growing rapidly. In 2010, Asia had 3.3 million millionaires (people with net worth over US$ 1 million excluding their homes), slightly below North America with 3.4 million millionaires. In 2011, Asia topped Europe in number of millionaires. Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Asian centa-millionaire overtook North America's wealth for the first time as the world's "economic center of gravity" continued moving east. At

1620-462: Is moist across southeast sections, and dry across much of the interior. Some of the largest daily temperature ranges on Earth occur in western sections of Asia. The monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections, due to the presence of the Himalayas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in moisture during the summer. Southwestern sections of the continent are hot. Siberia

1728-457: Is mostly tribal and a rural society. The main inhabitants of Kandahar province are the ethnic Pashtuns . They are followed by the Baloch people , Tajiks , Uzbeks , Turkmens and Hazaras . There is speculation revolving around the origin of the name "Kandahar". The name Kandahar ( Sanskrit : कंधार ) is believed to be linguistically corrupted form of a word Gandhāra ( Sanskrit : गंधार ), which

1836-569: Is one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere , and can act as a source of arctic air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippines and south of Japan. Climate change is particularly important in Asia, as the continent accounts for the majority of the human population. Warming since the 20th century is increasing

1944-517: Is one of the largest educational institutions in the province. It has over 5,000 students, about 300 of which are female students. In partnership with the Asia Foundation , Kandahar University conducted a pilot project that provided female high school graduates with a four-month refresher course to prepare for the college entrance examination. The university is one of two universities in Kandahar that serve all of southern Afghanistan. The conditions in

2052-699: Is partly in Asia, but is considered a European nation , both culturally and politically. The Gobi Desert is in Mongolia and the Arabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East. The Yangtze in China is the longest river in the continent. The Himalayas between Nepal and China is the tallest mountain range in the world. Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north. There are various approaches to

2160-486: Is projected to move to third place, behind China and India. While nearly half of the world's new renewable energy capacity is built in Asia, this is not yet sufficient in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement . They imply that the renewables would account for 35% of total energy consumption in Asia by 2030. Asia has the largest continental economy in the world by both GDP nominal and PPP values, and

2268-429: Is the fastest growing economic region. As of 2023 , China is by far the largest economy on the continent, making up nearly half of the continent's economy by GDP nominal. It is followed by Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are all ranked among the top 20 largest economies both by nominal and PPP values. Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of

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2376-403: Is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth 's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population , was the site of many of the first civilisations . Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of

2484-577: The European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC ). This ended in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy. It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2027. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP by currency exchange rates was almost as large as that of the rest of Asia combined. In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equaled that of

2592-703: The Hebrew Bible in the narrative of Noah —and later to Christians in the Old Testament , and to Muslims in the Quran —is earliest found in Mesopotamian mythology , in the Enûma Eliš and Epic of Gilgamesh . Hindu mythology similarly tells about an avatar of Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. Ancient Chinese mythology also tells of a Great Flood spanning generations, one that required

2700-615: The Hindu Kush region will become more unstable as its enormous glaciers , known as the "Asian water towers", gradually melt. These changes to water cycle also affect vector-borne disease distribution, with malaria and dengue fever expected to become more prominent in the tropical and subtropical regions. Food security will become more uneven, and South Asian countries could experience significant impacts from global food price volatility. Historical emissions from Asia are lower than those from Europe and North America. However, China has been

2808-727: The Iranian Plateau and in Central Asia, indicating cultural contacts during this very early age... The area was called Arachosia and was a frequent target for conquest because of its strategic location in Asia , which connects Southern , Central and Southwest Asia . It was part of the Medes territory before falling to the Achaemenids . In 330 BC it was invaded by Alexander the Great and became part of

2916-462: The Mujahideen . The groups were usually made up of fellow members of local tribes, and were led by a chief who inherited the title. In 1985, a major guerrilla commander, Esmatullah Muslim, joined the forces of the pro-Soviet Afghan government in Kandahar. A leading official of Afghanistan's Communist Party, Hayat Khan, was killed by guerrillas in the province August 1985. The Soviets carpet-bombed

3024-684: The Seleucid Empire following his death. The city then became a center of trade. Later Kandahar came under the influence of the Indian emperor Ashoka , who erected a pillar there with a bilingual inscription in Greek and Aramaic . The territory was ruled by the Zunbils before Arabs of the Umayyad Caliphate arrived in the 7th century CE. The Arabs advanced through Sistan and conquered Sindh early in

3132-694: The Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspian Sea), a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. During the Hellenistic period , this convention was revised, and the boundary between Europe and Asia was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don River). This is the convention used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius , Strabo and Ptolemy . The border between Asia and Europe

3240-870: The Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains , although it is sometimes placed further north. The border between Asia and Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Indonesia Archipelago , specifically in Eastern Indonesia . The Wallace Line separates

3348-578: The century of humiliation , with the British-supported opium trade and later Opium Wars resulting in China being forced into an unprecedented situation of importing more than it exported. Foreign domination of China was furthered by the Japanese colonial empire , which controlled some of East Asia and briefly much of Southeast Asia (which had earlier been taken over by the British, Dutch and French in

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3456-638: The monsoons will experience more flooding. The waters around Asia are subjected to the same impacts as elsewhere, such as the increased warming and ocean acidification . There are many coral reefs in the region, and they are highly vulnerable to climate change, to the point practically all of them will be lost if the warming exceeds 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). Asia's distinctive mangrove ecosystems are also highly vulnerable to sea level rise . Asia also has more countries with large coastal populations than any other continent, which would cause large economic impacts from sea level rise. Water supplies in

3564-540: The steppes . The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans , who spread their languages into West Asia, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia , was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra . These areas remained very sparsely populated. The center and

3672-579: The 13th century, the Timurids established rule and began rebuilding cities. From about 1383 until his death in 1407, Kandahar was governed by Pir Muhammad , a grandson of Timur . In the early 16th century, Kandahar briefly fell to Babur . From then on the province was controlled by the Shia Safavids , as their easternmost territories. They regularly had wars with the Sunni Mughals , who ruled Kandahar as

3780-730: The 17th century, the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing dynasty . The Islamic Mughal Empire (preceded by the Delhi Sultanate of the 13th to early 16th century) and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively. Western imperialism in Asia from the 18th to 20th centuries coincided with the Industrial Revolution in the West and

3888-518: The 1990s, with extreme poverty now below 20%; India and China's rise has coincided with growing tension between the two, with the Indo-Pacific now an actively contested area between China and counterbalancing forces. Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 9% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the longest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi). Asia

3996-575: The 7th century; Islam also spread over centuries to the southern regions of India and Southeast Asia through trade along the Maritime Silk Road . The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Before the Mongol invasion, Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300 census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people. The Black Death , one of

4104-579: The Asian and Wallacea biogeographical realms, a transition zone of deep water straits between the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Weber's Line split the region in two with regard to the balance of fauna between Asian origin or Australo-Papuan origin. Wallacea's eastern boundary with Sahul is represented by the Lydekker's Line . The Maluku Islands (except the Aru Islands) are often considered to lie on

4212-592: The Asian goods traffic is carried out across the Pacific towards Los Angeles and Long Beach . The melting of the Arctic is also paving the way for new shipping routes from Northeast Asia to Europe and North America. In contrast to the sea routes, the Silk Road via the land route to Europe is on the one hand still under construction and on the other hand is much smaller in terms of scope. Intra-Asian trade, including sea trade,

4320-783: The Bering Strait, with Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in the United States . The Aleutian Islands are an island chain extending westward from the Alaskan Peninsula toward Russia's Komandorski Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula . Most of them are always associated with North America, except for the westernmost Near Islands group, which is on Asia's continental shelf beyond the North Aleutians Basin and on rare occasions could be associated with Asia, which could then allow

4428-417: The Hittite king Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE. Roughly contemporary Linear B documents contain the term aswia ( Mycenaean Greek : 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊 , romanized:  a-si-wi-ja ), seemingly in reference to captives from the same area. Herodotus used the term in reference to Anatolia and the territory of the Achaemenid Empire , in contrast to Greece and Egypt. He reports that Greeks assumed that Asia

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4536-424: The Indian Ocean respectively in the late 15th century. The Russian Empire also began to expand into northwestern Asia from the 17th century, and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. Among non-European empires, the Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the mid 16th century onward, while in

4644-482: The Middle East has been affected since 1948 by the Arab–Israeli conflict and American-led interventions . East Asian nations (along with Singapore in Southeast Asia) became economically prosperous with high-growth " tiger economies "; China, having undergone capitalistic reforms under Deng Xiaoping , regained its place among the top two economies of the world by the 21st century. India has also grown significantly because of economic liberalisation that started in

4752-413: The Mujadhideen. He would become Taliban's Supreme Leader. The Taliban would take over almost all of Afghanistan. Under a version of Sharia law , they oppressed women heavily, although there were some minor moves towards equality in 2000. In 1997, due to international pressure, they began a campaign to rid the province of opium and heroin production, but the campaign failed. In October 2001, as

4860-443: The National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA), the total population of the province was estimated at 1,431,876. Pashtuns make up the majority in province. There are also communities of Baloch people , Tajiks , Uzbeks , Turkmens , Hazaras and others. The main language spoken throughout the province is Pashto . Dari and Balochi is also understood by some, especially in the city of Kandahar where learning of Dari as

4968-400: The Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century led to the Middle East also being contested and partitioned by the British and French. With the end of World War II in 1945 and the wartime ruination of Europe and imperial Japan, many countries in Asia were able to rapidly free themselves of colonial rule. The independence of India came along with the carving out of a separate nation for

5076-504: The Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Asia has three main financial centers: Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Call centers and business process outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centers. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become

5184-445: The Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces. Many of the world's major religions have their origins in Asia, including the five most practiced in the world (excluding irreligion ), which are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion (classified as Confucianism and Taoism), and Buddhism. Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Jews in

5292-440: The Red Sea over the Suez Canal into Mediterranean (see also: Indo-Mediterranean ), there via Haifa, Istanbul and Athens to the upper Adriatic to the northern Italian hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe or further to Barcelona and around Spain and France to the European northern ports. A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs via South Africa to Europe . A particularly significant part of

5400-454: The U.S. state of Alaska as well as the United States itself to be considered a transcontinental state. The Aleutian Islands are sometimes associated with Oceania, owing to their status as remote Pacific islands, and their proximity to the Pacific Plate. This is extremely rare however, due to their non-tropical biogeography, as well as their inhabitants , who have historically been related to Indigenous Americans . St. Lawrence Island in

5508-407: The US as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen /US$ . Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim , known as the Asian tigers , which are now all considered developed economies, having among

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5616-518: The area of multinational corporations , but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads. Many companies from Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan have operations in Asia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure. According to Citigroup in 2011, 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia,

5724-404: The border of southeast Asia, with the Aru Islands and Western New Guinea , to the east of the Lydekker's Line, being wholly part of Oceania, as both lie on the Australian continental plate. Culturally, the Wallacea region denoted the transition between Austronesian and Melanesian people , with varying degrees of intermixing between the two. In general, the further west and coastal a region is,

5832-420: The city during the Second Anglo-Afghan War from 1878 to 1880. It remained peaceful for about 100 years until the late 1970s. In the mid-20th century until 1979, Kandahar city was a major stop on a popular road to India used by hippies . In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan . This led to a war that lasted for years, between the Soviets and a rebellion by local guerrilla groups, known as

5940-546: The city of Kandahar and the border town of Spin Boldak in the south, which will then connect with Pakistan Railways . Ground transport of goods is carried by trucks and cars. A number of important roads run through the province and this helps the area's economy. The town of Spin Boldak serves as a major transporting, shipping, and receiving site. It is being developed so that trade with neighboring Pakistan increases. Kandahar province has bus services to major towns and village headquarters. Its capital, Kandahar, used to have

6048-432: The continent of Asia". Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass— Afro-Eurasia —and share a common continental shelf . Almost all of Europe and a major part of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate , adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with

6156-410: The country. It had a lack of government workers, which caused an influx of insurgents. Four of its 17 districts were under Taliban control. Health services and education were "virtually absent" outside of certain towns. In March, a major provincial official, Abdul Majeed Babai, was shot and killed. In the spring, the U.S. experienced fighting before their operation could start. They attempted to attain

6264-443: The cultural borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus, a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system (Europe, Africa, Asia) on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between them. For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe , the emeritus professor of European archeology at Oxford, argues that Europe has been geographically and culturally merely "the western excrescence of

6372-459: The detainees during interrogation in jail. Despite a new focus on gender equality, a dysfunctional legal system allowed for the continuing sale of child brides in the province. This was especially common in its northeastern area, which was discovered to be a Taliban stronghold. By 2004, U.S. and Afghan forces had started a guerrilla war against them. There was a surge in Taliban attacks in May 2006, which caused an influx of villagers across

6480-537: The dethroning of India and China as the world's foremost economies. The British Empire first became dominant in South Asia, with most of the region being conquered by British traders in the late 18th and early 19th centuries before falling under direct British rule after a failed 1857 revolt ; the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal , which increased British access to India, went on to further European influence over Africa and Asia. Around this time, Western powers started to dominate China in what later became known as

6588-420: The east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa; and to the east of the Turkish straits , the Ural Mountains and Ural River , and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black seas, separating it from Europe. Since the concept of Asia derives from the term for the eastern region from a European perspective, Asia is the remaining vast area of Eurasia minus Europe. Therefore, Asia

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6696-439: The easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Chersky Range ) on the North American Plate . The term "Asia" is believed to originate in the Bronze Age toponym Assuwa ( Hittite : 𒀸𒋗𒉿 , romanized:  aš-šu-wa ) which originally referred only to a portion of northwestern Anatolia . The term appears in Hittite records recounting how a confederation of Assuwan states including Troy unsuccessfully rebelled against

6804-412: The eighth century. Elsewhere however their incursions were no more than temporary, and it was not until the rise of the Saffarid dynasty in the ninth century that the frontiers of Islam effectively reached Ghazni and Kabul. Even then a Hindu dynasty the Hindushahis , held Gandhara and eastern borders. From the tenth century onwards, as Persian language and culture continued to spread into Afghanistan,

6912-399: The emperor Ashoka , who lived a few decades later, have been discovered in the old citadel. Excavations of prehistoric sites by archaeologists such as Louis Dupree and others suggest that the region around Kandahar is one of the oldest known human settlements so far. ...Early peasant farming villages came into existence in Afghanistan ca. 5000 B.C., or 7000 years ago. Deh Morasi Ghundai,

7020-428: The end of 2011, there were 18,000 Asian people mainly in Southeast Asia, China and Japan who have at least $ 100 million in disposable assets, while North America with 17,000 people and Western Europe with 14,000 people. With growing Regional Tourism with domination of Chinese visitors, MasterCard has released Global Destination Cities Index 2013 with 10 of 20 are dominated by Asia and Pacific Region Cities and also for

7128-413: The equatorial south via the hot deserts in parts of West Asia , Central Asia and South Asia , temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in North Asia . The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal , the Gulf of Suez , the Red Sea , and the Bab-el-Mandeb . This makes Egypt a transcontinental country , with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and

7236-401: The first prehistoric site to be excavated in Afghanistan, lies 27 km (17 mi.) southwest of Kandahar (Dupree, 1951). Another Bronze Age village mound site with multiroomed mud-brick buildings dating from the same period sits nearby at Said Qala (J. Shaffer, 1970). Second millennium B.C. Bronze Age pottery , copper and bronze horse trappings and stone seals were found in the lowermost levels in

7344-414: The first time a city of a country from Asia ( Bangkok ) set in the top-ranked with 15.98 million international visitors. East Asia had by far the strongest overall Human Development Index (HDI) improvement of any region in the world, nearly doubling average HDI attainment over the past 40 years, according to the report's analysis of health, education and income data. China, the second highest achiever in

7452-428: The focus of power shifted to Ghazni , where a Turkic dynasty (from the Samanid city of Bokhara ) proceeded to create an empire of their own. The greatest of the Ghaznavids was Mahmud , who ruled between 998 and 1030. He expelled the Hindus from Ghandhara. Mahmud of Ghazni made the area part of the Ghaznavids in the 10th century, who were replaced by the Ghurids . After the destructions caused by Genghis Khan in

7560-405: The founding father of Afghanistan, gained control of the province in 1747 and made the city of Kandahar the capital of his new Afghan Empire. In the 1770s, the capital of the empire was transferred to Kabul. Ahmad Shah Durrani's mausoleum is located in the center of the city. British-led Indian forces occupied the province during the First Anglo-Afghan War from 1832 to 1842. They also occupied

7668-446: The highest GDP per capita in Asia. Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum , forests , fish , water , rice , copper and silver . Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in China, Taiwan , South Korea, Japan, India, the Philippines, and Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in

7776-574: The late 19th century), New Guinea and the Pacific islands ; Japan's domination was enabled by its rapid rise that had taken place during the Meiji era of the late 19th century, in which it applied industrial knowledge learned from the West and thus overtook the rest of Asia. One significant influence on Japan had been the United States, which had begun projecting influence across the Pacific after its early-to-mid-19th century westward expansion . The breakup of

7884-511: The lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large equestrian force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies. The Islamic Caliphate 's defeats of the Byzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia and southern parts of Central Asia and western parts of South Asia under its control during its conquests of

7992-711: The majority of South Asian Muslims , which in 1971 further split into the countries Pakistan and Bangladesh ; Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union strained relations between India and Pakistan and affected Asia more generally. The end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union by 1991 saw the independence of the five modern Central Asian countries. Some Arab countries took economic advantage of massive oil deposits that were discovered in their territory, becoming globally influential, though stability in

8100-459: The military backing of two influential leaders in the region, the warlord Haji Ghani and tribal leader Haji Lala, but only Ghani was receptive. Later, there were two notable incidents of U.S. soldiers massacring Afghan civilians in Maiwand District and Panjwai District . The U.S. and NATO's combat mission in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014. By 2015, The Guardian wrote Kandahar city

8208-508: The most devastating pandemics in human history, is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along the Silk Road . European involvement in Asia became more significant from the Age of Discovery onward, with Iberian-sponsored sailors such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama paving the way for new routes from Atlantic Europe to Pacific Asia and

8316-505: The nearby cave called Shamshir Ghar (Dupree, 1950). In the Seistan , southwest of these Kandahar sites, two teams of American archaeologists discovered sites relating to the 2nd millennium B.C. (G. Dales, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania , 1969, 1971; W, Trousdale, Smithsonian Institution , 1971 – 76). Stylistically the finds from Deh Morasi and Said Qala tie in with those of pre- Indus Valley sites and with those of comparable age on

8424-698: The northern Bering Sea belongs to Alaska and may be associated with either continent but is almost always considered part of North America, as with the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain. At their nearest points, Alaska and Russia are separated by only 4 kilometres (2.5 miles). Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Greeks , being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia does not exactly correspond to

8532-465: The peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However,

8640-589: The province to leave their homes for bigger cities. Also that month, a top Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah , was arrested. In June, a car bomb almost killed the provincial governor. Meanwhile, the U.S. started transferring authority over the province to NATO, which the Taliban used as an opportunity to move in west of Kandahar city, likely to threaten it. The U.S. and NATO started Operation Medusa in September, which reportedly killed, captured, and expelled hundreds of insurgents. However, plenty of civilian property

8748-418: The province were banned from multiple institutions. In 2023, the office of the Taliban's spokesman was moved from Kabul to Kandahar. Yousaf Wafa is the current governor of the province. His predecessor was Rohullah Khanzada. In early 2003, Hamid Karzai transferred Sherzai from Kandahar to Jalalabad as Governor of Nangarhar Province . Sherzai was replaced by Yousef Pashtun in Kandahar. I According to

8856-613: The province's southern districts in 1986. Kandahar city became "mostly ruins". Guerilla plans for taking the unoccupied city were thwarted when the Soviet and Afghan government forces returned there in 1988. The Soviets eventually withdrew from the country. In the early 1990s, the province's governor was Gul Agha Shirzai . The province under his reign was described as anarchic . The Taliban began in Kandahar in 1994, when Mullah Omar (previously an ally of Mujahideen warlord Rais Abdul Wahid ) started an Islamist movement against misrule by

8964-422: The province, north of the city of Kandahar. There are approximately 700 greenhouses in the entire province but farmers want the government to build more. There are a number of hospitals in the province, most of them in the city of Kandahar. These include Aino Mina Hospital, Al Farhad Hospital, Ayoubi Hospital, Mirwais Hospital , Mohmand Hospital, Sial Curative Hospital and Sidal Hospital. Kandahar University

9072-404: The province. Two of the commanders who fought in Kandahar prior to the surrender were Gul Agha Shirzai, who became the province's governor again, and Hamid Karzai , who became the president of Afghanistan. Kandahar city became a base of U.S. army forces (at Kandahar Airfield), new construction efforts, and was the site of an assassination attempt on Hamid Karzai . In the following years,

9180-682: The regional division of Asia. The following subdivision into regions is used, among others, by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). This division of Asia into regions by the United Nations is done solely for statistical reasons and does not imply any assumption about political or other affiliations of countries and territories. Asia has extremely diverse climate features. Climates range from Arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia. It

9288-668: The remainder of the country in Africa. The threefold division of the Old World into Africa, Asia, and Europe has been in use since the 6th century BCE, due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus . Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni river) in Georgia of Caucasus (from its mouth by Poti on the Black Sea coast, through

9396-454: The roads and highways are being improved. Kandahar has been known for having well-irrigated gardens and orchards, and was famous for its grapes, melons, and pomegranates. The main source of trade is to Pakistan, Iran and other regional countries. Kandahar is an agricultural area and several of the districts are irrigated by the Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority . The Dahla Dam is located in

9504-435: The single largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the 21st century, while India is the third-largest. As a whole, Asia currently accounts for 36% of world's primary energy consumption, which is expected to increase to 48% by 2050. By 2040, it is also expected to account for 80% of the world's coal and 26% of the world's natural gas consumption. While the United States remains the world's largest oil consumer, by 2050 it

9612-583: The stronger the Austronesian influences, and the further east and inland a region is, the stronger the Melanesian influences. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Indonesian Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of

9720-603: The threat of heatwaves across the entire continent. Heatwaves lead to increased mortality, and the demand for air conditioning is rapidly accelerating as the result. By 2080, around 1 billion people in the cities of South and Southeast Asia are expected to experience around a month of extreme heat every year. The impacts on water cycle are more complicated: already arid regions, primarily located in West Asia and Central Asia , will see more droughts , while areas of East , Southeast and South Asia which are already wet due to

9828-529: The top 5 being in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul . Around 68 percent of international firms have an office in Hong Kong. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economy of China had an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. According to economic historian Angus Maddison , India had the world's largest economy during 1000 BCE and 1 CE. India was the largest economy in the world for most of

9936-533: The two millennia from the 1st until 19th century, contributing 25% of the world's industrial output. China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India. For several decades in the late twentieth century Japan was the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1990 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as

10044-416: The university are poor but improving slowly. Kandahar University is far behind many of the other universities in the country because of insecurity and shortage of funding, There are approximately 377 public and private schools in Kandahar province. The total number of students is 362,000. Of this, 79,000 are female students. Due to insecurity and other issues, many female students drop out before obtaining

10152-469: The various empires there (not all European). Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of 'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process." The Bering Strait and Bering Sea separate the landmasses of Asia and North America , as well as forming the international boundary between Russia and the United States. This national and continental boundary separates the Diomede Islands in

10260-509: The west, Maywand and Zhari districts to the south, Arghandab and Shah Wali Kot districts to the east and Naish District to the north. Before Zhari District was created in 2004, it bordered Panjwai District . This Kandahar Province , Afghanistan location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Kandahar Province The province contains about 18 districts , over 1,000 villages, and approximately 1,431,876 people (the 6th most populous province), which

10368-484: The world from 1 to 1800 CE. China was a major economic power for much of recorded history, with the highest GDP per capita until 1500. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia

10476-408: The world in terms of HDI improvement since 1970, is the only country on the "Top 10 Movers" list due to income rather than health or education achievements. Its per capita income increased a stunning 21-fold over the last four decades, also lifting hundreds of millions out of income poverty. Yet it was not among the region's top performers in improving school enrollment and life expectancy. Nepal ,

10584-575: The world's population. Asia shares the landmass of Eurasia with Europe , and of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa . In general terms, it is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean , on the south by the Indian Ocean , and on the north by the Arctic Ocean . The border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct , as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. A commonly accepted division places Asia to

10692-634: The world, which is in the "very high human development" category), followed by Singapore (9), Japan (19) and South Korea (22). Afghanistan (155) ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed. Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates . Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue , more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 400 languages spoken in India, and more than 100 are spoken in

10800-558: Was built by the United States in the 1960s under the United States Agency for International Development program. It was later used by Soviet and Afghan forces during the 1980s and again during the 2001–2021 NATO-led war. The airport was upgraded and expanded during the last decade by the United States Army Corps of Engineers . There is currently no rail service but reports indicate that at least one will be built between

10908-652: Was considered "largely secure by Afghan standards". It had gained an extensive police force and blast walls , and commercial and domestic flights had restarted there. However, that year, the U.S. pulled funding from various development programs in the region, and there were fears it could lead to a strengthened Taliban; the Afghan national security forces were "strained" in the absence of international troops. In 2018, Afghanistan's election commission delayed elections in Kandahar after two senior provincial officials (its police commander and intelligence agency commander) were killed in

11016-456: Was destroyed. A reconstruction effort began, named Operation Baaz Tsuka . In 2009, the U.S. started planning for a new anti-Taliban operation in the province, building a presence around Kandahar city. Their Stryker Brigade was sent to the district of Spinboldak , on the Pakistan border, to shut down Taliban infiltration routes. In 2010, Kandahar was considered the most dangerous province in

11124-509: Was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Asia. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until

11232-748: Was home to some of the world's earliest known civilisations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilisations in Mesopotamia , the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilisations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel . Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands. The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from

11340-471: Was named after the wife of Prometheus , but that Lydians say it was named after Asies , son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis . In Greek mythology , "Asia" ( Ἀσία or Ἀσίη ) was the name of a " Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia". The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer ) mentions two Phrygians in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning "Asian"); and also

11448-442: Was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Hinduism , Zoroastrianism , Judaism , Jainism , Buddhism , Confucianism , Taoism , Christianity , Islam , Sikhism , and many other religions. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from

11556-412: Was unsuccessful. In December, Kandahar city fell to the invading forces , marking the end of Taliban government at that point. Mullah Omar's presidential palace was bombed by U.S. forces, later being rebuilt and used as a complex for U.S. Special Forces . Omar went into hiding, and pledged to keep fighting against the invasion. In a deal with the U.S., the surrendering Taliban agreed to give up in

11664-565: Was used between 2000-1700 BCE. It is also believed to have started as one of many cities named after the Hellenistic conqueror Alexander the Great throughout his vast (mainly ex-Achaemenid) empire, its present form deriving from the Pashto rendering of Arabic Iskandariya = Ancient Alexandria (in Arachosia) . A temple to the deified Alexander as well as an inscription in Greek and Aramaic by

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