Nomads Unhappy With Parliamentary Share

Kuchis, Afghanistan’s nomadic people, will go to the polls on September 18 to cast their ballot for the ten lawmakers who will represent them in the new parliament. But Kuchi voters and candidates alike say the small number of seats allotted to them in the new legislature represents just the latest action in a long history of government oppression.

The new parliament will be based on proportional representation, which means the Kuchis should be assigned a number of representatives commensurate with their population.

According to the last the census - conducted in the Seventies during the rule of President Daud Khan - there were 3.7 million Kuchis. A preliminary census conducted earlier this year, however, put their number at 1.5 million, according to officials at the census department.

Some Kuchi politicians claim their representation in parliament should be much higher than the ten seats they’ve been granted. Candidate Haji Mullah Tarakhel insists that they should have seven times that number.

“Both the government and the United Nations are responsible for this. The reason our rights are violated is because we are poor and we neither have artillery nor tanks to demand our rights by force,” he told IWPR.

Tarakhel said that he had repeatedly complained to President Hamed Karzai, the UN and the Joint Electoral Management Body, JEMB, but as yet he has received no response.

According to Sultan Ahmad Baheen, spokesman for the JEMB, the decision to assign ten seats to the Kuchis was made by the Afghan government, with no input from his organisation. “I have not been given a census report on the Kuchis,” he said.

The new parliament will have a 249-member lower house, the Wolesi Jirga, made up of representatives from the 34 provinces and the ten Kuchi legislators - at least three of the latter have to be women.

Parwin Mohmand Talwasa, who is running for one of the women’s seats, said that this is not the first time that Kuchis have been mistreated by their government.

“Kuchis have always been oppressed in our history. They are the poorest class of society. This allocation of so few seats in parliament is just another sign of that oppression,” she said.

The Kuchis may not be represented at all in the upper house, or Meshrano Jirga, which in part is chosen by provincial councils. Kucis do not qualify for seats in the latter because of their nomadic lifestyle.

Mohammad Nazir Ahmadzai, who is also running for office among the Kuchis, said that he too had submitted many complaints to the president, the UN and the electoral commission, all to no avail.

“The Kuchis do not want Afghanistan to turn into a battleground again, which is why they have complied with decisions made by the government and the electoral commission,” he said. “But once Kuchis get seats in parliament, they will raise their voices.”

There are 68 Kuchi candidates running, 61 men and seven women. Only Kuchis can vote for the designated candidates, who will run nationally rather than representing geographical constituencies.

Kuchi voters are incensed at what they see as the government’s refusal to address their concerns, and fear that under-representation in the new parliament will only aggravate their situation.

“The government has promised Kuchis that it will provide them with mobile schools for their children, with clinics and potable water. But it has done nothing,” said Haji Ahmad Shah Bakukhail, 60.

“No one is listening to the Kuchis’ voices,” said 45-year-old Gul Wali.

Wahidullah Amani is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.