Kunduz

Kunduz exemplifies boom-and-bust cycles in export-oriented agriculture. At its peak, the Spinzar Cotton Company—founded by Sher Khan Nasher and headquartered here—was one of the world's largest cotton producers, exporting primarily to the Soviet Union. The company made Kunduz one of Afghanistan's wealthiest provinces. Today cotton production has revived to 500,000 tons nationally, but the infrastructure and market access that created the golden age have never fully recovered from decades of conflict.

The province's northern location defines its economic logic. The Sher Khan Bandar border crossing links Afghanistan to Tajikistan via a modern bridge across the Amu Darya. This transit point channels regional trade that reached nearly $1.7 billion between Afghanistan and the five Central Asian states by 2024. Kunduz serves as a key node in Afghanistan's pivot away from Pakistan toward Central Asian trading partners, a strategic reorientation driven by border disputes with Islamabad. The CASA-1000 power transmission project, when operational, will bring Central Asian electricity through Kunduz to South Asia.

The geography that makes Kunduz valuable also makes it contested. The Taliban captured the city briefly in 2015 and 2016—the first provincial capital to fall since 2001—before permanently taking control in August 2021. The Tajik border's proximity offers economic opportunity but also requires political management: a large ethnic Uzbek and Tajik population maintains cultural connections across boundaries. Like an organism adapted to floodplains, Kunduz has learned to extract value from the flows—water, goods, people—that pass through while enduring periodic inundations that reshape everything.