Located on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains in the northeastern part of the country, Nurestan spans the basins of the Alingâr, Pech, Landai Sin, and Kunar rivers. It's capital is Nurestan. It is bordered on the north by Badakhshan province, on the west by Kapisa province, on the south by Laghman and Konar provinces, and on the east by Pakistan.
Until the 1890s, the region was known as Kafiristan (Persian: Land of the Infidels) because of its inhabitants: the Nuristani, an ethnically distinctive people (numbering about 60,000) who practiced animism. The region was conquered by AmirAbdur Rahman Khan in 1895-96 and the Nuristani were forcibly converted to Islam. The region was renamed Nurestan, meaning Land of the Enlightened, a reflection of the "enlightening" of the pagan Nuristani by the "light" of Islam.
Nurestan was the scene of some of the heaviest guerrilla fighting during the 1979-89 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet forces.
Nuristan means "the land of light." Yet it is one of the darkest places in Afghanistan.
Nuristan has become a sad example of an Afghanistan where local and foreign radicals have managed to scare aid and government workers away and force people to live according to their orthodox views.
Infidel Nuristan was only forcibly converted to Islam at the end of the 19th century – when its name changed from Kafiristan (the land of the infidels) to Nuristan.
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