' registrations. Registration of a ship provides it with a nationality and
makes it subject to the laws of the country in which registered (the flag state)
regardless of the nationality of the ship's ultimate owner.

Money figures: All money figures are expressed in contemporaneous US dollars
unless otherwise indicated.

National product: The total output of goods and services in a country in a given
year. See Gross domestic product (GDP), Gross national product (GNP), and
GNP/GDP methodology.

Net migration rate: The balance between the number of persons entering and
leaving a country during the year per 1,000 persons (based on midyear
population). An excess of persons entering the country is referred to as net
immigration (3.56 migrants/1,000 population); an excess of persons leaving the
country as net emigration (-9.26 migrants/1,000 population).

Population: Figures are estimates from the Bureau of the Census based on
statistics from population censuses, vital statistics registration systems, or
sample surveys pertaining to the recent past, and on assumptions about future
trends. Starting with the 1993 Factbook demographic estimates for some countries
(mostly African) have taken into account the effects of the growing incidence of
AIDS infections; in 1993 these countries were Burkina, Burundi, Central African
Republic, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda,
Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Thailand, and Brazil.

Total fertility rate: The average number of children that would be born per
woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore
children according to a given fertility rate at each age.

Years: All year references are for the calendar year (CY) unless indicated as
fiscal year (FY).

Note: Information for the US and US dependencies was compiled from material in
the public domain and does not represent Intelligence Community estimates. The
Handbook of International Economic Statistics, published annually in September
by the Central Intelligence Agency, contains detailed economic information for
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries,
Eastern Europe, the newly independent republics of the former nations of
Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, and selected other countries. The Handbook can
be obtained wherever The World Factbook is available.

***THE WORLD FACTBOOK 1994

@Afghanistan, Geography

Location:
Southern Asia, b