KABUL (The Thursday Times) — Nearly 500 families in Omid-e Sabz, a mainly Hazara township in western Kabul, have been ordered to leave their homes, sources said, as the Taliban force out residents who cannot pay rent on houses they say they own.
The orders came from the Taliban’s justice ministry, headed by Abdul Hakim Sharaei, according to the sources, who said families from other parts of the country had been moved into some of the homes already emptied. The ministry did not respond to questions about the evictions.
Residents said on Thursday that the Taliban had begun evicting families who could not afford the monthly rent of 4,000 afghanis the ministry has set for each room. Videos sent by residents showed families loading their belongings onto vehicles and leaving the township.
“People are in an extremely difficult situation,” said one resident, who asked not to be named. “They do not know where to go or where to seek shelter in this winter cold.”
Another resident said people’s fingerprints and signatures had been taken “through force and coercion”, and that families who could not pay had been told to leave. Residents have said armed officials from the ministry went door to door, making people put their fingerprints on documents about the rent.
In several other parts of Kabul, residents are being made to pay the ministry between 1,000 and 5,000 afghanis a month in rent for their own homes, the sources said.
Land declared state property
The Taliban’s justice ministry has declared more than 1,500 hectares of land in Omid-e Sabz to be state property, a ruling that has put the homes of thousands of families at risk. Local figures put the township’s population at about 80,000 people, or 11,500 families, in around 2,100 residential buildings with their own shops, mosques, schools, and clinics.
Many residents bought their homes from earlier owners and hold property documents and municipal approvals. Ownership of the land has been disputed for more than three decades, through the Taliban’s first government in the 1990s and the administrations of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani. The township’s main developer, Mohammad Nabi Khalili, a brother of former vice-president Mohammad Karim Khalili, bought land there in 1994 and first planned it as housing for Afghans returning from neighbouring countries.
Several community representatives and Hazara elders from the township were arrested last week on the minister’s orders and remain in custody, the sources said. Residents have said in a joint statement that they will not pay the rent, and that the Taliban had agreed to consider their request for a review of the ruling on the land.
A social activist said residents saw the evictions as discrimination against Hazaras, a mostly Shia minority, arguing that families from other communities and people linked to the Taliban were being settled in their homes.
The evictions add to pressure on Afghans as winter sets in. This week, an investigation found that Afghan women were being denied health care after the Taliban barred male doctors from treating them in parts of the country, and judges at the International Criminal Court narrowed their Afghanistan investigation to focus on the Taliban.
