Afghan Land Dispute Sparks Ethnic Tension

Life is becoming increasingly perilous for 82 families who have spent the past six weeks languishing in an old prison in Takhar province. Denied food and clean drinking water, and living in the open without adequate shelter, they are becoming desperate.

“The soldiers bring things from the local bazaar, and sell them to us for four times the normal price,” said Shahwo, a 45-year-old woman who has been virtually imprisoned for more than one month. “If you ask them for change, they just say ‘shut up or I’ll smash you in the mouth’.”

In late August, Shahwo and more than 500 former residents of Takhar province returned following years of exile in Pakistan.

Most are Pashtuns, the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan, who had fled the fighting that plagued their province during the Soviet invasion. Now, after more than two decades, they have come back to reclaim their houses and lands.

But local residents, drawn mainly from the Uzbek minority, have long since moved into the abandoned properties.

To prevent an outbreak of hostilities, say the authorities, they brought the Pashtuns to an old prison in the Khajabahauddin district of Takhar. Originally built by jihadi commander Ahmad Shah Massoud in the mid-1990s to jail Taleban fighters, it has turned into an uncomfortable refuge for the returnees.

“My children are ill, they have fever, diarrhea, vomiting,” complained Shahwo. “I cannot take them anywhere for treatment. Yesterday one of my neighbour’s children died, and we could not even have a normal funeral service. Armed men accompanied us to the cemetery.”

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