The Shah-i-Kot Valley (also Shahi-Kot, Shah-e-Kot and other variant spellings) is a valley in the

Paktia Paktia (Pashto – ''Paktyā'') is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the east of the country. Forming part of the larger Loya Paktia region, Paktia Province is divided into 15 districts and has a population of roughly 623,0 ...

province of

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

, southeast of the town of

Zormat Zurmat () is the main town of Zurmat District in Paktia Province, Afghanistan. Zurmat is the largest city of Paktia Province, while Zurmat District, with a population of 109,805, is also the most populous district of the province.mean A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

altitude Altitude is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum (geodesy), datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometr ...

of . Shah-i-Kot means "Place of the Kings" in

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

and it has historically been a redoubt for Afghan

guerrillas Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...

hiding from foreign invaders.

History

The area was the scene of fierce fighting between the Afghan

mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' (), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' (), an Arabic term that broadly refers to people who engage in ''jihad'' (), interpreted in a jurisprudence of Islam as the fight on behalf of God, religion or the commun ...

rebels and

Soviet forces The Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also known as the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, the Red Army (1918–1946) and the Soviet Army (1946–1991), were the armed forces of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republi ...

during the

Soviet–Afghan War The Soviet–Afghan War took place in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Marking the beginning of the 46-year-long Afghan conflict, it saw the Soviet Union and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic o ...

, as the

battle for Hill 3234 } The Battle for Hill 3234 () was a successful defensive battle fought by the 9th Company of the 345th Independent Guards Airborne Regiment, Soviet Airborne Troops, part of Operation Magistral, supported by the Afghan Army’s 15th Tank Briga ...

. In 2002 the valley was also the scene of

Operation Anaconda Operation Anaconda or the Battle of Shah-i-Kot was a military operation that took place in early March 2002 as part of the War in Afghanistan. CIA paramilitary officers, working with their allies, attempted to destroy al-Qaeda and Taliban force ...

, one of the largest battles of the

War in Afghanistan War in Afghanistan, Afghan war, or Afghan civil war may refer to: *Conquest of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great (330 BC – 327 BC), the conquest of Afghanistan by the Macedonian Empire * Muslim conquests of Afghanistan, a series of campaigns in ...

References

Valleys of Afghanistan Wars involving the Taliban Landforms of Paktia Province {{Paktia-geo-stub

History

See also

References