Balkh (Tajikistan)

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Balch
Балх
Basic data
State : TajikistanTajikistan Tajikistan
Province : Chatlon
Coordinates : 37 ° 35 '  N , 68 ° 40'  E Coordinates: 37 ° 35 '22 "  N , 68 ° 39' 39"  E
Height : 390  m
Residents : 18,700 (2019)
Balkh (Tajikistan)
Balch
Balch

Balch ( Tajik Балх ; to 2017 Колхозобод , Kolchosbod , Russian Колхозабад , Kolchosabad ) is the administrative center of the region (nohija) Rumij ( Румӣ ) in the province (wilojat) Khatlon in southwestern Tajikistan . In the urban settlement (shahrak) on the lower reaches of the Wachsch the remains of the early medieval fortified city of Kafirkala have been preserved.

location

Fields and reed irrigation ditches on the western outskirts near Kafirkala

Balch is located at an altitude of 390 meters in the wide river valley of the Lower Wachsch, the largest river in southern Tajikistan, which flows into the Pandsch around 60 kilometers south . Downriver of the confluence Amudarja , this is the border with Afghanistan . In the west, the valley is bordered by the Aruk-Tau mountain range, which is up to 1633 meters high. It separates the Wachsch valley from the valley of the Kofarnihon . The eastern boundary of the Wachsch Valley, which is up to 30 kilometers wide, is formed by the Terekli-Tau (Terekli Tagh) mountain range, which extends roughly between the cities of Danghara in the north and Pandsch on the river of the same name in the south.

From the state capital Dushanbe , the A384 trunk road leads south via Obikiik to Balch, about 120 kilometers away. A somewhat longer connection from Dushanbe is the A385, which runs via Norak to Danghara and further south-east via Kurbon Shahid to Kulob . From Danghara a road branches off to the southwest through the Wachsch valley and reaches Balch about 32 kilometers behind Qurghonteppa . Approximately equidistant from Qurghonteppa and Balch, east of the road is the settlement of Wachsch . The next small town a good 50 kilometers southwest of Balkh is Qubodijon in the valley of the Kofarnihon. The A384 continues via Shahritus to Termiz in Uzbekistan . From the connection in Termiz, a 264-kilometer-long railway line was built between 1966 and 1980 via Qubodijon three kilometers west past Balkh north to the Jowon settlement. In 1999 the line from Qurghonteppa was extended by 132 kilometers eastwards to Kulob.

The soils in the valley floor are fertile and, with artificial irrigation, are suitable for growing cotton , grain and vegetables. Average temperatures reach a maximum in July of 29.2 ° C and a minimum in January of 3.1 ° C. The annual precipitation, which falls mainly in winter and spring, averages 280 millimeters. This is the lowest amount of precipitation at which rain-fed agriculture can be possible.

district

Central intersection near the market
Entrance to the market with the name of the district: Nohijai Jaloluddini Rumi .

The district Rumij (Jaloluddini Rumii nohija) , named today after the Persian-speaking poet Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (Tajik Ҷалолуддини Румии , Jaloluddini Rumii, 1207-1273), was called Tugalang when it was founded in 1933 and Kolchos from 1934 to 2007 . The surrounding districts were also founded in the 1930s with the introduction of state irrigation agriculture in the valley of the Wachsch. The district belonged to an oblast that was called Kurgan-Tjube (Qurghonteppa) from 1944 and 1947 and again from 1977 to 1992 .

The district covers an area of ​​1142 square kilometers, on which 134,200 inhabitants (National Office for Statistics in Kurghonteppa, 2003) live mostly in small villages. The proportion of the urban population is 17,400 (data from 2010). The district is divided into six sub-districts (dschamoat): Usun, Nawobod, Madanjat, Guliston, Frunze, Kalinin and Tugalang. The Rumij district is surrounded by the districts of Jilikul ( Ҷиликӯл ) in the west, Bochtar ( Бохтар ) in the northeast, Wachsch ( Вахш) in the north, Farchor ( Фархор ) in the east, Pandsch ( Панҷ ) in the southeast and Qumsangir ( Қумсан ) in the south.

In the 1930s, with the guidelines of the Soviet planned economy, the large-scale planting of Egyptian cotton began in the valley of the lower Wachsch. This made it necessary to expand the infrastructure that had previously only consisted of earth roads and shipping traffic on the Amu Darya. In 1932 the first narrow-gauge railway line was put into operation from the river port Panzi Pojon on the Amurdaja via the village of Wachsch in the Wachsch Valley to Qurghonteppa. In the 1950s, many Tajiks were forcibly relocated from the central mountain valleys to work in the cotton fields in the southwest Tajik plains. The large farms were kolkhozes , which were named after the district and town with the suffix -abad . Cotton fields require intensive irrigation. The water is drained from the Wachsch via canals. Due to the height difference, more than half of the water in the district has to be pumped onto the fields using pumping stations. Towards the end of the Soviet period, the cotton-processing industrial combine of Kolkhozobod was one of the country's biggest polluters, along with the TALCO aluminum smelter .

After the country gained independence in 1991 and with the end of the civil war that followed, a land reform program began in 1996 in which the arable land remained in state ownership but was handed over to the previous administrators of the collective farms for lease. In the districts of Kolkhozobod, Schahritus and Pandsch, all suitable kolkhozes, apart from a few, which are used for seed breeding, young cattle breeding and research purposes, had been converted accordingly by 2003. In the Kolkhozobod district, 623 farms were created under the vague designation "dean farm" ( dean , "farmer"). In theory, the owners of these dean farms are independent and free in their economic decisions. In practice, regional administrations force farmers to plant cotton on at least 70 percent of their arable land. If they do so, they threaten to expropriate the land. Seeds and fertilizers have to be bought from a monopoly. The average farm size in Kolkhozobod and four other districts in the southwest was 17.2 hectares in 2003 with extreme values ​​of 1.5 and 124 hectares. In a survey in 2003, only 6 percent of the households in Kolkhozobod stated that they had received dean land. The vast majority of the population are employed as wage laborers on larger farms.

Cityscape

From the settlement hill Kafirkala to the north

According to official censuses, the population was 5,336 in 1959, 9,382 in 1970 and 10,808 in 1979. In 1989 the number had risen to 13,354, in 2010 it was about 15,500. For 2014, the estimated population is 17,200.

From 1882 to 1934 the settlement around the old fortress hill Kafirkala was called Tugalang and until 1957 after the Soviet party and state functionary Lasar Kaganowitsch Kaganowitschabad (Russian Кагановичабад ) before it was named Kolkhozobod . As part of the renaming of a number of localities in the region, the settlement was given its current name by order of the Tajik National Assembly on February 16, 2017, according to one of the Tajik names (next to Bochtar ) of the historical Bactria landscape , in the northern part of which the town is located.

The Soviet cotton processing plant called Sirodschiddin Issoyev was in a run-down condition when it was privatized along with 21 other cotton mills in Tajikistan between 1998 and 2000. The expressway runs from north to south through the middle of the city, parallel to a wide irrigation canal on the eastern edge of the city. The buildings, which predominantly consist of free-standing houses, are accessed by an almost regular rectangular street grid. Not far from the central intersection is a large market that is held in semi-open halls and under parasols outdoors. There is a well-kept city park with a high population of trees. The modern Mullo Umar Mosque , the only distinctive building, has three high domes over a flat roof and two six-tier minarets. The former fortress town of Kafirkala (Kāfer Qalʿa) is just under a kilometer west of the center on the edge of a simple residential area and close to a few Soviet apartment blocks.

literature

  • Kamoludin Abdullaev, Shahram Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2010

Web links

Commons : Balch (Kolkhozobod)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Vakhsh Valley . In: Kamoludin Abdullaev, Shahram Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. P. 376.
  2. ^ Railways. In: Abdullaev, Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. P. 297.
  3. Kolkhozobod, Tajikistan. weatherbase.com.
  4. Khatlon. In: Kamoludin Abdullaev, Shahram Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. P. 199.
  5. Jalolidin Rumi Nohija. In: Kamoludin Abdullaev, Shahram Akbarzadeh: Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan. P. 190 f.
  6. ^ MV Hambly: Road vs. Rail. A Note on Transport Development in Tadzhikistan. In: Soviet Studies. Volume 19, No. 3 January 1968, pp. 421-425, here p. 419.
  7. Murat Arsel, Max Spoor (Ed.): Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development: Conflict and Cooperation in Central Eurasia (= Routledge ISS Studies in Rural Livelihoods ). Routledge Chapman & Hall, London 2009, p. 197.
  8. ^ Sharon Eicher: Environmental Resources and Constraints in the Former Soviet Republic. Chapter 20: Tajikistan. (PDF) 1994, p. 6.
  9. ^ Priorities for Sustainable Growth: A Strategy for Agriculture Sector Development in Tajikistan. World Bank-SECO Report, 2010, p. Viii.
  10. ^ Obie Porteous: Land Reform in Tajikistan: From the Capital to the Cotton Fields. ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Action Against Hunger, Dushanbe, October 2003, p. 5 f. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / iep.berkeley.edu
  11. Всесоюзная перепись населения 1959 г. demoscope.ru.
  12. Всесоюзная перепись населения 1970 г. demoscope.ru.
  13. Всесоюзная перепись населения 1979 г. demoscope.ru.
  14. ^ The provinces of Tajikistan as well as all cities and urban settlements of more than 10,000 inhabitants. City population.
  15. Order No. 350 on the renaming of some localities [...] of the Khatlon Oblast of the Majlissi Milli of the Republic of Tajikistan from February 16, 2017 (Russian)
  16. ^ Tajikistan - Privatization Resumes With War's End. Pangea Partners, Table 3.
  17. Mosque Mullo Umar in Kolkhozabad. Panoramio photo.