Talk:Kandahar

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Discussion for: Kandahar • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Kandahar treats the cannabis growing area of Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan: what the UNODC and Ministry of Counter Narcotics cannabis surveys of 2009 to 2012 report for the province, its growing season and varieties as the surveys give them for the Southern region, its trade and seizures, the 2006 reports of cannabis fields in Panjwayi, and the herbarium specimens and seed lots from the province. The province as an administrative unit is treated at Kandahar Province, the city at Kandahar (city), and the country's cannabis as a whole at Afghanistan.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the area is mapped

• The page rests on the four cannabis surveys of the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the UNODC (2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012). Each reports cultivation by province, and each reports cannabis cultivation in Kandahar: "yes" in table 2 of the 2009 survey, and "Yes" for 2009 to 2012 in table 1 of the 2012 survey. The 2009 survey adds that all four southern provinces it covered "had sizable amounts of cannabis cultivation" (p. 20). None of the surveys gives an area for Kandahar or for any one province.
• The surveys' photographs name places in the province with cannabis fields: Dand, Zhari, Arghandab and Maywand in 2009 (pp. 57–59), central Kandahar in 2010 (pp. 17, 20) and Panjway in 2012 (p. 15). They are pictures, not a survey of districts, so they do not narrow the border.
• The seed lots name the province, and The Real Seed Company's says only "outside Kandahar". Their stored points are the city of Kandahar. The lots support the page only through the surveys; none places the crop more closely.
• The growing status is Active: the surveys found cultivation each year from 2009 to 2012, and Bradford and Mansfield (2019) say growing resumed in Kandahar after 2001. No source says that growing in the province ended.

How the border is drawn

• The map border is Kandahar Province in OpenStreetMap (administrative relation 1674567, AF-KAN; about 53,970 km²), simplified. It is a proxy: the surveys report by province, so the province is the unit they support. The infobox gives the area of the line as now drawn (see below) and names the unit in its terrain line.
• No narrower border was drawn. The districts in the survey photographs are a sample of where pictures were taken, not a statement of where the crop is or is not grown.
• The border is not drawn from the accession points; the city of Kandahar and every stored accession point fall inside it.
• Since October 2026 the map line leaves out ground above 4,000 m (SRTM elevation) and land that ESA WorldCover 2021 maps as bare or sparse vegetation, permanent snow and ice, or open water at its outer edge only: land of those kinds that the kept ground encloses is inside, pieces less than 5 km apart are joined, and pieces under 25 km² with no accession in them are left out. About 15,900 km² of the 53,950 km² inside Kandahar Province are inside the line. The map point is the city of Kandahar, inside the line.

Sources

• The surveys. All four reports are cited from the UNODC copies for 2009, 2010 and 2011 and from the ReliefWeb copy of the 2012 report. Page numbers in the article are the reports' printed numbers.
• Bradford and Mansfield (2019). Online at journals.openedition.org/echogeo/17626; cited by paragraph number.
• Reuters (12 October 2006). Read in the copy published by NBC News. The article text does not name the province; the photograph caption on that copy places the field outside Panjwayi in Kandahar Province, and the article attributes the place to that copy.
• McPartland and Small (2020). The epitype designation is on p. 98 of the paper.

Where the sources disagree

• Prices in 2009. Bradford and Mansfield (para. 24), citing an unpublished 2009 report by Mansfield, say that prices in Kandahar in 2009 were markedly higher than in Balkh. The 2009 survey's monthly price series shows the north above the south and east from the beginning of 2008 (p. 37). The article gives the survey's figures and leaves the 2009 comparison here.
• Spellings. The surveys write Maywand (photographs) and Maiwand (maps), Zhari, and both Panjway and Panjwayee; the Reuters copy writes Panjwayi. The article links Maywand District, Zhari District and Panjwayi District.
• Arghandab. Kandahar has an Arghandab district and so does Zabul, so the name is left unlinked in the article.

Other reports

• The Real Seed Company's description of Kandahar as an ancient centre of cannabis biodiversity and of charas export is a seller's statement, given with attribution on the Afghanistan page and on the lot pages; it is not repeated here.
• Herbarium sheets. Schultes's labels from near Kandahar (December 1971) say nothing about whether the plants were cultivated, and one, 26505, was an escape in a formerly irrigated field, according to McPartland and Small's supplementary material as cited on Schultes 26505 (1971). The sheets are named in the article but are not counted as accessions of the growing area.