Town

Towns (shahr) generally occur where several major trails intersect, usually near a large river. Since 1953, new asphalt roads have been built within a day’s walking distance of most towns.

The town is usually the lowest commercial, administrative, and communications entity. Villagers often bring raw materials,, local village products, and agricultural produce to the town by donkey, horse or on their own backs. The goods are then shipped to the cities by truck, camel, or donkey. Many of the larger towns have horse-drawn, two-wheeled gawdi (similar to the Indian tonga) for local transportation. The lower-grade civil servants and quasi-military police have their headquarters in the town, and landlords who own land in the surrounding villages often live in the town. Trucks transport finished goods from cities to towns, which always have a bazaar street along the main, and frequently the only, street. Full-time specialists—iron-mongers’, potters (Demont and Centlivres, 1967), weavers, dyers, carpenters, masons, general storekeepers, bicycle repair men, automotive repair men, caravansarai owners—generally live above their shops in the bazaar, thus occupational-residential unity exists (L. Dupree, 1968c).

Many structures in towns, particularly government buildings, are now constructed with bricks (khist-i-pokhtah) baked in kilns.

The town bazaar, especially the sarnovar, also acts as an important disseminator of news. Although samovar is the common name for teahouse in Afghanistan, the Iranian Farsi term, chaykhanah, has come into popular usage (particularly among foreigners) since World War II. No longer must the Afghans depend on a face-to-face, word-of-mouth situaion as a primary spreader of rumors and news. All chaykhanah have transistor radios capable of picking up most stations from Radio Peking to the Voice of America. Radios have also made multiple appearances in the villages and only the remoter areas lack at least one transistor radio. Even some nomads tend their flocks to the tunes of a small radio. Many chaykhanah have a hand-cranked phonograph, which blares out 78 r.p.m. recorded music, which is primarily Hindu film music. Indian films are very popular in Afghanistan in towns and cities where film theaters exist: Kabul, Jalalabad, Qandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Maimana, Kunduz, Pul-i-Khumri.

The new provincial system promulgated in March, 1964, forced the creation of many new provincial capitals with "new" administrative towns constructed separately from the "old" towns. Often, the ubiquitous rivers needed to supply a town’s water needs neatly divide the "old" and "new" urban centers. Villages have grown into towns, and towns reverted to village status as the post-I 950’ infrastructure developed, and road systems shifted.

Afghanistan’s new provincial system attempts to decentralize in order to speed up economic and political development, and the towns serve as the links up and down the administrative chain.

The Afghan government divided the 7 major and 7 minor provinces into 28 provinces, all technically of equal rank. Originally, the 1964 plan called for 29, but Urgun—Katawaz Province still exists only on paper and in reality remains divided between Ghami and Paktya. As old roads and trails improve and new ones penetrate the less accessible areas, some neighboring provinces will probably join to form larger units and the total number will reduce from the present 28.

At first, the concept may seem illogical, but on closer examination it reveals a realistic approach. The provinces vary in size; the more accessible the area to roads and telecommunications, the smaller the province; generally those geographic regions with forbidding zones of inaccessibility are much larger.

A three-phase process appears to be evolving: 1) increase the number of provinces to encourage local involvement with provincial representatives of the central government; 2) as the infrastructure breaches zones of relative inaccessibility, further increase the number of provinces to increase development potential; 3) decrease the number of provinces as the entire country becomes readily accessible and centralization of efforts possible

Theoretically, a man can reach his provincial capital in one day on donkey, horse, or foot; previously it took several days in most provinces. However, even today for example, the trip from remoter Hazara viilages in Wardak—Maidan Province to its capital, Maidanshahr (or Kot-iAshro) requires two, and sometimes more, days.

At the present time, young energetic usually western-educated provincial, sub-provincial and district governors actively try to spread thc New Democracy introduced by King Mohamrnad Zahir Shah’s accession to power in 1963 and the promulgation of the new Constitution in 1964. Previously, the hakitn and ‘ala qadar governed with little check from the center, although the "eyes and ears of the King" (the ancient Achaemenid custom of having royal spies among civil servants) generally kept the provincial governors in line and discouraged them from seeking too much personal power or wealth, although corruption was (and is, in some areas) a major problem.

In order to obtain the relative number of towns, I have totaled the number of administrative centers from the lowest ‘aiaqadari to provincial capitals, with the exception of the five true cities. The total 309, is probably an overestimate because a number of the lower range administrative centers in Paktya, Ningrahar, and Kunduz serve more as security-oriented, military outposts than real towns with a full range of commercial as well as governmental activities. Most, however, do fulfill two-thirds of the critical definition that they be administrative, commercial, and communication centers. Almost all towns have government schools, usually only the first three grades; no true villages have’ government schools. The quality of teaching is spotty and depends largely on the individual teachers involved.

In some larger towns, "ward" part-time specialization exists outside the bazaar. For example, at Ruka a Tajik town in the Panjsher Valley north of Kabul, with twenty separate subdivisions, the farmers of four "wards" are seasonal, part-time artisans: i.e., ironmongers, potters, weavers, cloth dyers. These specialists bring their wares to the central bazaar through which the main road passes.