Last modified: 2022-01-08 by ian macdonald
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Afghanistan has been deemed the winner of "the most frequent flag changes in the twentieth century" contest:
Nick Artimovich, 19 March 1996, augmented by editor.
This is just a brief overview of administrative history and of the system of
administrative-territorial divisions and local governance.
Although name
Afghanistan was in use for at least two centuries before independence, there
were four Emirates that were fighting for supremacy and uniting the territories
of today country. Since 1839 British held an Agent or Resident as the
representative of the Government for the region, up until 1919. The four
Emirates - Kabul, Herat, Kandahar and Ghazni with their tributary states and
dependencies were finally united under the supremacy of the Emir of Kabul Abdur
Rahman Khan in October 1881 as Emirate of Afghanistan. From 1881 until 1919
Afghanistan was under British Control (nominally under Government of India) and
formal independence was proclaimed on 13.04.1919.
The
administrative-territorial structure at the beginning was consisting of the
former emirates and their sub-states and dependencies. Somewhere in 1910's that
was transformed in the system of provinces, but with different status. It is
known that in 1929 there were 5 major - Kabul or Central Province, Kandahar,
Herat, Turkestan, and Kataghan-Badakhshan, and 4 minor provinces - Eastern
Province, Southern Province, Farah, and Maimanah. The real reform was taken in
1963/64 when all provinces became of equal status and many new provinces were
created. The process of creating provinces last in 1990's, and now Afghanistan
has 34 provinces. The provinces are divided in districts, which are lesser-tier
of the administrative-territorial structure of the country. The process of
creating districts is still going on and in 2015 there were 421 districts.
Afghanistan also has municipalities, but they are not part of the
administrative-territorial structure. They are autonomous statutory bodies,
creating to provide services for the urban settlements. There are 201
municipalities (as of 2017) of 4 categories. There is one municipality of
special case - Kabul, four municipalities of first class - Herat, Jalalabad,
Kandahar, and Mazar-e Sharif, 8 municipalities of second class - Farah, Ghazni,
Khost, Kunduz, Lashkargah, Pul-e Khumri, Talaqan, and Zaranj, and 188
municipalities of third class.
Valentin Poposki. 1 September 2020