By: Somaya Mandgar
Ali Reza Safari* lives in lower Rigshad, a village in Afghanistan’s central Bamyan province. But for two months he has not been able to park his car at home. The road to his house has had huge impassable pits dug into it by excavators. It’s a ploy to force him to pay a road tax claim brought this year by his neighbor.
As a taxi driver, Ali Reza Safari regularly takes passengers between his village area to the main markets of Bamyan city. But on his return home along the Bamyan-Yakawlang road, he is forced to leave his car outside the village and make the journey on foot. The five-minute journey by car has become a 30-minute walk.
The pits dug in the streets around Rigshad have caused problems across some 25 kilometres of road. As a result, the middle and lower Rigshad area, which is home to thousands of families, are blocked to most vehicles.
Power shift
Mr Safari, 38, says the problems began when the Taliban came to power in August 2021. A group of Pashtuns, galvanized by a Pashtun-majority Taliban being in charge, began to make claims where Hazara locals had lived for decades.
Residents in Rishgad allege that Pashtuns arrived and claimed swathes of land in middle and lower Rigshad, where long-standing residents of the area had built their homes, had been stolen.
According to Ali, a tribe of nomadic Kuchis – closely related to ethnic Pashtuns – presented a title deed to almost four acres of the village. Ali claims the deed was falsified. Its authenticity is unable to be verified by Rukhshana Media.
Using these documents, the Kuchis took the residents to a Taliban-run court. Ali says the court didn’t check the validity of the land titles and the final ruling is left to a tribal decision.
He claims a tribal meeting in October last year decided that the Hazara residents should pay money to the claimants if they were going to remain on the land. So in March 2023, Rigshad residents were forced to pay 11.8 million afghanis – about US$150,000. An extraordinarily high sum of money, especially in the current economic crisis.
photo: submitted to Rukhshana media.
But the trouble did not end there. Since then, another Pashtun named Gulab Shah has claimed that the public road of both lower and middle Rigshad passed through his land and people should pay a tax to use it.
Rigshad resident Wali*, 45, says that Gulab Shah initially demanded 1.3 million afghanis ($16,500 USD). He then increased his demand to 1.7 million afghanis ($21,500 USD).
When residents refused to pay, Gulab Shah brought in excavators at the end of August and dug deep and wide pits in the roads so they were inaccessible to residents’ vehicles.
“We can only walk to go to the city or go anywhere from our house to the surrounding villages, and that’s why we are facing a lot of trouble,” Wali says.
“Those who had cars, if they were parked at home, they can’t take them out, and if they are outside, they can’t take them home anymore. They must park in places where it is not very safe, or they park inside the city in garages for which they have to pay a fee.”
To further enforce the road tax, Rigshad resident Mohsen* says the Taliban detained 24 Rigshad men on the orders of Bamyan’s governor, who is connected to Gulab Shah.
Mohsen says he was among the 24 detainees. He says they were forced to promise to pay Gulab Shah’s demands in exchange for their freedom. The men all signed a guarantee for their release.
But upon being freed, Mohsen says Gulab Shah increased the demand.
“After we were released from prison, Gulab Shah said that the people of the middle and lower area of Rigshad should pay 6.4 million afghanis ($81,000 USD) in exchange for the release of the road,” he says. “Otherwise, the 24 of us will be arrested and imprisoned again.”
Mohsen says the road pits are causing a great deal of distress. “If someone has an urgent illness, no one can take him or her to the hospital immediately, and similarly, if a woman is about to give birth, she will not reach the hospital on time. She has to walk at least half an hour from the streets to the public road,” he says.
He adds that the elders of the middle and lower Rigshad have approached the Taliban governor in Bamyan Abdullah Sarhadhi several times to solve this problem and tried to file a lawsuit against Gulab Shah. But the Taliban governor has not heard their complaints.
The residents say there have been many cases opened against ethnic Hazaras in Taliban-run courts around the country. They allege there’s a pattern where the outcome is “always” found in favour of the Pashtun or Kuchi claimant.
Historic Daikundi claim
In another case last month, the Taliban forced the local Hazara residents to pay three million afghanis based on a historical claim of a Kuchi nomad Daikundi province’s Siahchob area of Sang-e-Takht district.
In this case, a nomadic person was claimed to have been killed by the local residents in solar year 1358 (1979). The local residents argue that in that year there was an attack of nomadic tribes on the people’s grasslands and a battle broke out between the groups. The residents say it’s not clear conflict who killed the Kuchi and there were casualties on both sides of the conflict.
“Nomads used to come to Siahchob using government force and destroyed people’s fields, taking over their pastures, and this issue sometimes caused quarrels and conflicts among local residents and the nomads. In one of the clashes in 1358, one of the nomads was killed and a number of people were injured,” Siahchob resident Ali Reza*, 30, says.
The Taliban have detained a 75-year-old man Ali Madd and his 45-year-old son over the claim. The pair have been transferred to various prisons for nearly two months in Herat, Kabul, and Daikundi.
“Mohammed Ali had a severe liver surgery three or four days before his arrest and was just discharged from the hospital,” Ali Reza says. “But the Taliban, regardless of his health condition, still arrested him.”
Ali Reza says an elders group passed a binding decision that Ali Madad and his son should pay 3 million afghanis ($38,000 USD) to the surviving relatives of the Kuchi man who was killed 44 years ago. The family was forced to pay.
“During a conciliation meeting, the harm that the people saw was not taken into consideration and the evidence that should have been requested was not present,” he says. “This decision was made unilaterally by force of the Taliban, and this amount of money was taken from the people.”
Ali Reza emphasizes that even in this decision, the Taliban used threats against the elders. “The elders of the region who went to resolve this issue were insulted,” he says. “They were bullied and all their words were ignored.”
It is not the first historical claim that seeks financial compensation. In another case, last year in an area neighboring Siahchob called Khair Ali, a similar claim was made.
“In a similar event last year, a Kuchi man was killed decades ago in a fight like the one I talked about. One person was also killed on the side of the native people of the region. But the Taliban government took 2 million afghani ($25,300 USD) from the residents last year and gave it to the nomads, without paying even the slightest attention to the local people who were killed.”
Meanwhile, the Hazara members of a dispute resolution commission in Bamyan have resigned in protest to the injustice they witness.
Sources closed to the commission say the Taliban’s Bamyan governor Abdullah Sarhadhi has imprisoned two residents from Reshak Poshta-e-Gharghari village, Mohammad Gholami and Ewaz Danish, because they did not hand over their properties after Kuchis claimed to the land.
Seven Hazara members of the Nomadic and Villagers Conflict Resolution Commission in Bamyan, established last year by Mr Sarhadhi, have resigned.
The Commission consists of 20 members including 10 Kuchis, two Sadaats, one Tajik, and the seven Hazaras.
A source close to the Commission, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says the Commission has been operating for five months under the chairperson Haji Toti Gul, a Kuchi.
He says the Sadaat and Tajik members generally side with Kuchi members, meaning the seven Hazara members are outnumbered. He says decisions of the commission are often made without the approval and signature of those seven people.
Saboor Sighani, the spokesman of the Taliban governor in Bamyan, says that the conflict resolution commission between the ten village dwellers and the Kuchi nomads in Bamyan is an independent commission composed of people from both factions. He says all cases are investigated and decided based on reliable evidence and documents.
In a phone call, he tells Rukhshana Media that the problem between villagers and nomads is a historical problem that has existed since the time of Zahir Shah’s rule (more than four decades back) in Afghanistan.
Mr Saighani denies there is any controversial issue in the Rigshad area of Bamyan or between its residents.
Regarding the lawsuits for unlawful deaths that are being reviewed and decided by the Taliban after 40 years, he says that these lawsuits were not favorable in the past which was an injustice. But now the Taliban authorities, based on documents and evidence, is investigating these lawsuits again and bringing justice.
Mr Saighani responded to questions about the arrest of two residents in Punjab district and 24 residents of Rigshad, saying that these are all rumors.
At the end of 2021, only months after the Taliban returned to power, Human Rights Watch reported that the Taliban were forcing Hazaras out of their homes and off their land.
“The Taliban are forcibly evicting Hazaras and others based on ethnicity or political beliefs from their neighborhoods in order to reward their supporters with their homes. This expulsion was done by threat and force, without any legal process and serious abuse, which is called collective punishment,” Human Rights Watch said in the report.
