Qalʽeh-ye Panjeh (Persian: قلعه پنجه), also written Qila-e Panjeh and Kala Panja, is a village in Wakhan, Badakhshan Province in north-eastern Afghanistan. It lies on the Panj River, near the confluence of the Wakhan River and the Pamir River.
Qalʽeh-ye Panjeh was once the capital of the Mirdom of Wakhan. The former hunting lodge of Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan is near the village. The village also contains the shrine of Panja Shah.
The Panj, traditionally known as the Ochus River, is a river in Afghanistan and Tajikistan and a tributary of the Amu Darya. The river is 921 kilometres (572 mi) long and has a basin area of 114,000 square kilometres (44,000 sq mi). It forms a considerable part of the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border.
The river is formed by the confluence of the Pamir River and the Wakhan River near the village of Qalʿa-ye Panja (Qalʽeh-ye Panjeh). From there, it flows westwards, marking part of the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan. After passing the city of Khorugh, capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of Tajikistan it receives water from one of its main tributaries, the Bartang River. It then turns towards the southwest, before joining the river Vakhsh and forming the greatest river of Central Asia, the Amu Darya. The Panj played an important role during Soviet times, and was a strategic river during the Soviet military operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s.