Urgun () is the main town of the
Urgun District of
Paktika Province
Paktika (Pashto: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the eastern part of the country. Forming part of the larger Loya Paktia region, Paktika has a population of about 789,000 residents, who are mostly ethnic Pashtuns but sma ...
,
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 ...
. With an estimated population of 10,665,
Orgun: map, population, location.
TipTopGlobe.com. Urgun is the largest city of Paktika, while Urgun District, with a population of 89,718, is also the most populous district of the province. Urgun historically used to be the capital of Paktika, but in the 1970s, the capital was shifted from Urgun to Sharana in the west because Urgun was not easily accessible from the main Kabul–Kandahar Highway.
Names
The town of Urgun is also called ''Loy Urgun'' (), "Greater Urgun".
Like many place names in Afghanistan, Urgun can be spelled a number of different ways. Orgun, Urgin, Urgum, Urgim, Urghim, Wargun, Warghun, Arghun, Urgon, and Orgon are the most popular alternative spellings.
Urgun with some land for agriculture has recently seen progress of a poorly made road connecting it to the angorada border with Pakistan. It has also been the witness of disastrous attacks including the one that left 106 civilians dead on a single day on June 14, 2014.
History
The site of a large fortress, Urgun used to be the capital of the largely undeveloped and remote province of Paktika. In the 1970s, however, the provincial capital was moved from Urgun to the town of Sharana, due to Sharana's proximity with the main highway connecting it to the larger cities and commercial centers of Kabul
Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...
and Kandahar
Kandahar is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city, after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118 in 2015. It is the capital of Kandahar Pro ...
.
The Siege of Urgun 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 ...
took place between 1983 and 1984. It devastated the town.
See also
* Loya Paktia
Lōya Paktiā (; lit. Greater Paktia) is a historical and cultural region of Afghanistan, comprising the modern Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Paktika, as well as parts of Logar
References
Populated places in Paktika Province
{{Paktika-geo-stub