Kabul River
The Kabul is a river approximately 700 kilometers (435 miles) long running mostly through eastern Afghanistan and a short distance in northwestern Pakistan. A tributary of the Indus River, it originates in the Sanglakh mountain range west of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. It then flows east, passing Kabul and the major cities of Jalalabad in Afghanistan and Peshawar in Pakistan. Soon thereafter it joins the Indus at Attock, not far from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. It has several major tributaries, including the Lowgar and the Konar.
Agricultural civilizations have existed on its banks for several thousand years, and it was known as far as ancient Greece, where it was called Cophes. Alexander of Macedon had used its valley as the route for his aborted invasion of India in the fourth century BCE. In the nineteenth century major battles between the native guerrilla groups and British forces were fought along its banks, immortalized in Rudyard Kipling's poem "Ford o'Kabul River."
A hydroelectric plant was built on the river but came into disuse during the prolonged period of warfare started by the Soviet invasion in 1978. Because much of the river has been tapped for irrigation over the years, often inefficiently, due to poor infrastructure and continuing economic stagnation and warfare, much of the river west of the city of Kabul dries up in the summers. The Peshawar-Kabul highway—a major truck route between Afghanistan and Pakistan— passes through the Kabul River valley. The Kabul River is navigable by flat-bottomed light vessels downstream of Kabul city.
Further Reading
Afghanpedia. (2001) "Kabul River." Retrieved 27 December 2001, from: http://www.spinghar.com/afghanpedia.
Hopkirk, Peter. (1994) The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. New York: Kodansha.
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