By: Elyas Ahmadi
Life for the Jogi community has never been easy in Afghanistan. But under the Taliban, their challenges have increased. Driven out of Ghazni with nowhere to go, some Jogi families returned. But with no money to replace their destroyed homes, this winter is shaping up to be one of their toughest yet.
They say they are from Helmand, but the local residents say they are Jogies. More than fifty families of the community used to live in the southeastern outskirts of Ghazni city. Now there are only 15 families left, most of whom are barely making a living. And all of whom don’t have basic facilities.
The children do not have access to healthy or sufficient food. And no one has any heating through the freezing winter. Some nights they wake up shivering, just hoping for the warmth of the next day’s sun to arrive. In Ghazni, the temperature sometimes drops to six degrees below zero in winter.
About two months ago, Taliban local authorities kicked them out of their shelters and told them to leave Dasht-e-Ali Lala. But they had no where else to go.
Mohammad Khan, 35, who heeded the Taliban order, left his shelter and took refuge with his family in Khost province. After living in Khost for two months, he had to return to the Ghazni shelter that had been destroyed by the Taliban.
“Khost is a good place, but the people there looked down on travelers. That’s why we came back,” he says, referring to the harassment they received from the locals.
Mohammad Khan insists his family are not Jogies. “We don’t know them, we are Helmandis,” he says, adding they moved from Helmand to Ghazni about 15 years ago. Two months ago, the Taliban expelled them from the area and destroyed their shelters.
The Jogi clan usually do not like to wear the label due to the relentless harassment they face. In Afghanistan, it’s a cycle of constant discrimination. Many of them still do not have birth certificates. Their children are not permitted to go to school, and many job opportunities are closed to them. The women tend to earn a living through fortune-telling, hawking, and begging. Many of the Jogi men are either unemployed or doing similar work to the women.
Despite denying his Jogi identity, Mohammad Khan concedes his family are nomads and are always harassed by others.
“We are nomads without a herd,” he says. “Wherever we earn a loaf of bread, we will stay there. We have nothing of our own.”
Mohammad Khan and his relatives speak cautiously about the Taliban, reluctant to complain about them or speak about how they’ve been treated.
But a Pashto-speaking man, originally from Kunduz province who recently moved to Dasht-e-Ali Lala, told Rukhshana Media he witnesses the Taliban clearing the Jogi families out from the area.
He says the Taliban beat Mohammad Khan and his extended family with sticks, driving them out of their shelters which were subsequently destroyed.
According to the 60-year-old man, who declined to be named in this report, the Taliban also arrested a number of Jogi men and beat others until they were forced to leave the neighborhood. “A few families have returned secretly at night,” he adds.
Mohammad Khan has two wives and 10 children, five of whom are under the age of seven. He says he cannot sleep much at night for worrying about the cold weather and whether his children will get sick.
“Every moment I check the blanket over the children so that they don’t get sick. If they get sick, I don’t have money to take them to a doctor,” he says.
But talking about his problems becomes too much for him. “Go, it’s good that you don’t understand what we are going through,” he says.
Hamid, 22, is the younger brother of Mohammad Khan. His daughter, who is under 5 years old, has had a severe cold in recent days. Hamid says he brought a prescription for his daughter from the pharmacy, but she still has a severe cough. He shows their destroyed shelter, saying he doesn’t know how the winter will turn out.
Hamid and his neighbors have attempted to repair the ruins of their destroyed homes. Among them, many children with worn-out clothes and dusty faces can be seen. Three of them are wetting a piece of dry bread with water and trying to eat it. Witnessing this, Hamid says, “This is our situation, you can’t even find bread to eat. See how they cut the bread with wet water and eat it with a spoon. They are also sick.”
The restored shelters are still damp with cold. There is no glass in the windows or doors where the gates would be. Some windows are covered with old plastic and in the place of gates there’s propped up pieces of old wood.
Next to one of the shelters, a middle-aged woman is sitting with her child in the dim afternoon sun. Without any prompting, she exclaims to the Rukhshana Media reporter, “This is what has happened to us. They destroyed our homes! Look, our house still doesn’t have a roof.”
About 200 metres down the road, the intact homes of the (Kuchi?) Pashtun nomads remain untouched. Since the return of the Taliban to power, the number of nomads in Dasht-eAli Lala has increased, despite the Jogis being expelled from the area.
Jahangir, 24, has two wives and several children. After they were forced out of Ghazni, he sent his first wife and children to Kabul and now only his second wife and their child lives with him.
Jahangir says one of these children died about two weeks ago due to severe malnutrition, a common ailment among their children which often leads to death. In the last three years, two children out of 15 in his extended family have died due to freezing temperatures in the weather and three others died due to malnutrition. Sahil, his child, was the last one who died of malnutrition.
And it’s not only the children who are vulnerable. The elderly people are also severely affected by the weather and conditions.
Hamid’s father is now hospitalized in Ghazni city hospital due to a heart problem. He says that last year in winter, one night part of his father’s lung and liver froze and his father had a ministroke.
His father has been suffering from a severe heart problem since last year and the doctors have advised him to get surgery, but they cannot afford it.
“Life and death are in the hands of God. There is no money to operate,” he says.
Even before the Taliban destroyed their shelters, winters for Hamid and Mohammad Khan and their relatives were deadly, killing members of their families. But this year, they expect it will only be worse as they face the harsh climate without adequate shelter and no support from authorities.
