AFGHANISTAN

The mountainous  country  of Afghanistan lies in south-central Asia.  It is bordered 

by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,  Tajikistan, Iran,  and  Pakistan.  A panhandle  on 

the northeast, the Wakhan  Corridor, connects it with China. Its southernmost part 

is separated  from the nearest sea, the Arabian  Sea,  by 300  miles (480 kilometers) 

of  Pakistani territory.  Afghanistan has  been  known  as a  crossroads between East 

and  West.  

Isolated  and  land-locked, it clung to traditional ways of life. By the mid-1900s  the  

Afghans  began to accept the ideas, methods,  and  machines of modern  industrial 

societies. Afghanistan is approximately 252,000 square miles in area. In the mid-1990s  

the country's population was estimated  at a  bout  18.1 million.  Kabul, the  capital  

and  largest city, had more  than  1 million inhabitants. more