Produced by Dr. Gregory B. Newby

The Project Gutenberg Edition of THE CIA WORLD FACTBOOK 1992: January 1, 1993

This edition, as are all Project Gutenberg Editions, is Plain Vanilla ASCII, meaning there are no characters other than what you would see on paper, thus no page returns, no markup, nothing but the characters you would type if you were to copy this from a book on a typewriter. Repetitive paged headers and trailing spaces are not present. Leading spaces have been preserved in fact sections for readability.

Mail subject headers can be searched with leading :'s. . .such as:

:Afghanistan Geography
:Afghanistan People
:Afghanistan Government
:Afghanistan Government
:Afghanistan Economy
:Afghanistan Economy
:Afghanistan Communications
:Afghanistan Defense Forces

To find the beginning of any country, search for :country
To find internal information, search for :country section, as above.

THE CIA WORLD FACTBOOK 1992

:Afghanistan Geography

Total area:
647,500 km2
Land area:
647,500 km2
Comparative area:
slightly smaller than Texas
Land boundaries:
5,529 km total; China 76 km, Iran 936 km, Pakistan 2,430 km, Tajikistan
1,206 km, Turkmenistan 744 km, Uzbekistan 137 km
Coastline:
none - landlocked
Maritime claims:
none - landlocked
Disputes:
Pashtunistan issue over the North-West Frontier Province with Pakistan;
periodic disputes with Iran over Helmand water rights; Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia, and Iran continue to support clients in country; power struggles
among various groups for control of Kabul, regional rivalries among emerging
warlords, and traditional tribal disputes continue
Climate:
arid to semiarid; cold winters and hot summers
Terrain:
mostly rugged mountains; plains in north and southwest
Natural resources:
natural gas, crude oil, coal, copper, talc, barites, sulphur, lead, zinc,
iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones
Land use:
arable land 12%; permanent crops NEGL%; meadows and pastures 46%; forest and
woodland 3%; other 39%; includes irrigated NEGL%
Environment:
damaging earthquakes occur in Hindu Kush mountains; soil degradation,
desertification, overgrazing, deforestation, pollution
Note:
landlocked

:Afghanistan People