[A decades-long fight over land has
been reinvigorated as Taliban leaders look to reward their fighters with
property, even if that means evicting others.]
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Yaqoob
Akbary
Soon after the Taliban takeover on
Aug. 15, the new government told them all to get out.
Ghullam Farooq, 40, sat in the
darkness of his shop in Firqa last month, describing how armed Taliban fighters
came at night, expelling him at gunpoint from his home in the community, a neighborhood
of Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan.
“All the Taliban said was: ‘Take
your stuff and go,” he said.
Those who fled or were forcibly
removed were quickly replaced with Taliban commanders and fighters.
Thousands of Afghans are facing
such traumatic dislocations as the new Taliban government uses property to
compensate its fighters for years of military service, amid a crumbling economy
and a lack of cash.
Over decades, after every period of
upheaval in Afghanistan, property becomes a crucial form of wealth for those in
power to reward followers. But this arbitrary redistribution also leaves
thousands displaced and fuels endless disputes in a country where the land
ownership system is so informal that few people hold any documentation for the
ground they call their own.
Just as during past changes in
government, distributing property to Taliban disciples in swaths of rural
farmland and in desirable urban neighborhoods has turned into at least a
short-term recourse to keep stability within the Taliban ranks.
“Who has the guns gets the land,”
said Patricia Gossman, the associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
“It’s an old, long continuing story.”
In a largely pastoral nation split
by rugged mountain ranges, dotted with deserts and little forest, land is one
of the most important assets and a flashpoint, fueling blood feuds between
neighbors, ethnic groups and warlords as power has changed hands. Conflicting
legal systems dictating land ownership and a lack of documentation have further
destabilized the property market through the generations.
The country is slightly smaller in
land area than Texas, with a population that has grown in past decades to
around 39 million people. Yet, only one-eighth of Afghanistan’s land is
farmable and shrinking under a crippling drought and changes wrought from
climate change.
Today’s land disputes in
Afghanistan can be largely traced to the Soviet-backed regime that came to
power in the late 1970s, which redistributed property across the country. This
quickly fueled tensions as land was confiscated and given to the poor and
landless under the banner of socialism.
Land redistribution continued to
play out, first during the civil war in the early 1990s, and then under the
rise of the Taliban. After the U.S. invasion in 2001, those same commanders who
were once defeated by the Taliban went about distributing and stealing land once
more, this time with the backing of the newly installed U.S.-supported
government. American and NATO military forces contributed to the problem by
seizing property for bases and
doing little to compensate landowners.
Attempts by the Western-backed
government over the past two decades to formalize land ownership and property
rights ultimately proved futile as the incentives to take advantage of the
system overwhelmed efforts to regularize it.
Now more than three months after
the Taliban’s rise to power, its administrators are in a similar position, but
with no official policy regarding land ownership.
“We are still analyzing and
investigating how to honor land deeds and titles for people,” Bilal Karimi, a
Taliban spokesman, said.
Local Taliban leaders have been
seizing and reallocating property for years in districts they captured to
reward fighters and the families of their dead with land to farm or sell for
profit.
In 2019, when the Taliban arrived
at Mullah Abdul Salam’s modest poppy farm in Musa Qala, in Helmand Province, he
faced an impossible choice. Like many poor farmers in rural Afghanistan, he had
no legal deed to prove he owned the ground he had cultivated for years.
So the Taliban gave him an
ultimatum: Either pay a lump sum to keep his land or give it up.
“We came early and we had the right
to the land,” Mr. Salam recalled, standing on the edge of his poppy field in
Musa Qala, shovel in hand. “It had to be ours.”
For some time, the land in Musa
Qala was unclaimed, undocumented and written off as unfarmable, except by a few
farmers such as Mr. Salam. Then the ground became more fertile with the
widespread growth of solar power that enabled farmers to run well pumps, at far
lower expense than use of conventional fuel. The Taliban tried to strike a
balance by allowing the poor farmers to remain at relatively small cost, while
allocating unclaimed plots to its fighters.
Khoi, a brother of a Taliban
fighter who goes by one name, was among the family members of the militants who
received land in Musa Qala two years ago. Since then, he said, fellow Taliban
veterans had profited by selling portions of the property gifted to them.
“There is no more land for the
Taliban to distribute here, if they could, they would,” he said.
With no official guidance, Taliban
officials have now resorted to the same practices throughout the country that
carved up the area around Mr. Salam’s farm.
But as the Taliban distribute
property, parts of the population have been left confused and angered by the
actions of their new government, which suspiciously resemble the behavior of
its predecessors.
In Takhar Province, a historically
anti-Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan’s north, Taliban fighters have evicted
people — including some who had lived there for more than 40 years — in several
districts, saying the land was unfairly distributed by previous governments,
said a former Afghan lawmaker on the condition of anonymity for fear of
retaliation against her family.
Takhar residents, the former
lawmaker said, have started to question whether Taliban administrators can run
the country any more effectively than their predecessor, given how they are
following the same practices as past governments.
“The greatest issue for the Taliban
going forward will be to deal with land documentation and legalization,” said
Fazal Muzhary, a former researcher at Afghanistan Analysts Network, a policy research group, who
focused on land ownership in Afghanistan. “So when the Taliban want to legalize
or demarcate lands, they will also need to take back the lands from people who
grabbed them in any period, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and so on. This will be
very challenging for them.”
In central Afghanistan, property
disputes of another nature are playing out: the marginalization and
displacement of ethnic minorities in order to seize their arable land. Taliban
leaders have long persecuted and antagonized the Hazaras, a mostly Shiite
minority, and in recent months, the new government has watched as local
strongmen evicted hundreds of families.
In September, Nasrullah, 27, and
his family fled their village in Daikundi Province, along with around 200
families who left nearly everything, he said.
Such displacements have upended
more than a dozen villages in central Afghanistan, affecting more than 2,800
Hazaras, according to a Human Rights Watch report.
In recent weeks, local courts have
overturned some seizures, allowing some families to return. But for most, the
evictions have been traumatic.
“In each village the Taliban put a
checkpoint, and the people aren’t allowed to take anything but our clothes and
some flour,” said Nasrullah, who goes by one name, during an interview in
September. “But I brought only my clothes.”
Taimoor Shah contributed
reporting from Kandahar; Victor J. Blue from Kabul; Jim
Huylebroek from Musa Qala; and Sami Sahakfrom Los Angeles.
