Kafirnigan River
The Kafirnigan is a river in Tajikistan and a large tributary of the Amu Dar'ya, which it joins about 36 kilometers downstream of the confluence of the Pyandzh and Vakhsh Rivers. The Kafirnigan is 387 kilometers long with a basin area of 11,600 square kilometers. It rises in two branches from the southern slopes (partly from glaciers) of the Gissar Range and flows south through the Gissar Valley. The river is fed primarily by snow.
The average annual discharge at the mouth is 156 cubic meters per second. In the lower reaches the banks are covered with reeds and tugai (riparian) forests.
The river's waters are used for irrigation. During the Soviet period, important irrigation development took place in the Kafirnigan River basin. Together with Uzbekistan, in 1940 Tajikistan built the large Gissar Canal, which carries water from the Dushanbe River into the basin of the Surkhandarya River (in Uzbekistan). The total irrigated area in the Kafirnigan basin is 49,000 hectares. Three of the nineteen dams (fourteen on the Amu Dar'ya) in Tajikistan are on the Kafirnigan.
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