Faryab Province - History

History

Further information: History of Afghanistan

Faryab is a Persian word meaning "irrigated land". The modern province is named after a town that was founded by the Sassanids and later destroyed by the invading Mongols in 1220. It is the home town to the famed Islamic philosopher, al-Farabi, per the biographer Ibn al-Nadim.

Between the early 16th century and mid-18th century, the area was ruled by the Khanate of Bukhara. It was conquered by Ahmad Shah Durrani in or about 1747 and became part of the Durrani Empire, which formed to the modern state of Afghanistan. The area was untouched by the British during the three Anglo-Afghan wars that were fought in the 19th and 20th centuries.

During the 1990s Afghan Civil War, the front line between Taliban and opposition forces often fell between Badghis and Faryab provinces in the mid-1990s. Former Tajik warlord Ismail Khan also fled to Faryab to reconstitute his forces following the Taliban takeover of Herat Province, but was betrayed by Uzbek warlord Abdul Malik Pahlawan.

In May 1997, Abdul Malik Pahlawan raised the Taliban flag over the capital of Maimana, switching sides and initiating a renewed Taliban offensive from the west. Following a series of changing allegiances and falling out with Malik, the Taliban withdrew from the area, but in 1998 a contingent of 8,000 Taliban troops pressed through Faryab, seizing Abdul Rashid Dostum's headquarters in Sheberghan, in neighboring Jowzjan province.

Faryab province has been one of the more peaceful areas in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001. Recent development projects in the province have focused on expanding the agricultural potential of the province, in particular the re-forestation of areas of the province that were denuded in the recent past.

It was reported in 2006 that Abdul Malik Pahlawan's Freedom Party of Afghanistan still maintained an armed militant wing, which was contributing to instability in province. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANFS) began expanding and slowly took over control. The Afghanistan-Turkmenistan border is maintained by the Afghan Border Police (ABP) while law and order for the rest of the province is provided by the NATO-trained Afghan National Police (ANP).

At the province is a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), which is led by Norway. The Norwegian PRT has its base at Maymana and has also been given the responsibility for the Ghormach District which used to be in neighboring Badghis but is now, as of December 2008, part of Faryab Province.

Afghanistan signed a deal with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for the development of oil blocks in the Amu Darya basin, a project expected to earn billions of dollars over two decades; the deal covers drilling and a refinery in the northern provinces of Sar-e Pol and Faryab, and is the first international oil production agreement entered into by the Afghan government for several decades. CNPC began Afghan oil production in October 2012, and in the same month a huge gas reserves were discovered in the Andkhoy District of Faryab province.