Rival Land Claims May Stoke Tensions in Afghan North

Residents of Kunduz region in northern Afghanistan are concerned at a rising tide of land claims by incomers who say they used to live in the area.



The disputes in Dasht-e-Owdan and neighbouring areas close to the northern border with Tajikistan highlight the lack of clarity about land tenure across Afghanistan as a result of conflict and population displacement over many years.



The incomers are Afghans from the south of the country, close to the border with Pakistan, who say they used to live in Kunduz province decades ago. They have documents to support their property claims, too - reportedly including one signed by Afghan president Hamed Karzai.



Locals say the lands are rightfully theirs, although they do not possess official documents to that effect. They argue that the newcomers could easily have bribed officials to get forged land ownership papers.



The wave of migration seems to have been prompted by the escalating conflict in southwest regions such as Helmand and Kandahar. Northern areas like Kunduz offer peace and good farmland.



Haji Arslan, a local government official in Dashti-e- Owdan, explained the complexity of the land ownership issue, in which both locals and incomers appear to have some valid arguments.



He said migrants from other parts of Afghanistan started moving in about 50 years ago, attracted by a government incentive scheme. Some failed to adjust and went back home, but others stayed on.



Of this latter group, a number were forced to leave as ethnic tensions rose during the wars of the Eighties and Nineties. Arslan said their lands were then appropriated by whichever local militia commander ruled the roost at the time, who then sold them on to people who built up homes and farms on the property. There was of course no paperwork involved in this kind of transaction.



As paperwork can be lost or forged, it is difficult to track which of the incomers did once own land here, or whether it was in the recent past - say the last 15 years or so - or much longer ago.



“There was indeed out-migration from these regions to other parts of Afghanistan in past decades, but current trends suggest that the number of people coming in here is rising and could be more than the original number [of people who left],” said Haji Muhammad Emin Kani, a member of parliament from Kunduz. “Given the lack of governance, no one now knows exactly how many forced migrants left these areas, especially Dasht-e-Owdan.”



If some of the incomers' claims are deemed to be genuine, the logical conclusion is that the people now living on the disputed lands will be evicted.



That could prove an explosive solution. Nadir Turkmen, a Kabul-based journalist familiar with the area, warns that the result could be armed clashes between residents and outsiders.



"The real danger is that some of the locals will simply be ordered to leave their homes without being offered any other option or an alternative place to live. This is a risky approach, since the future of 10,000 or more local residents could be at stake here," he said.



Central government is unlikely to step in with a solution, since its reach and effectiveness remain weak. But instead of taking matters into their own hands, the people of Dasht-e-Owdan are trying to put pressure on the authorities to help them.



According to journalists in the capital, hundreds of people from Dasht-e-Owdan came to Kabul and staged a protest in mid-August calling for an end to "illegal settlement by outsiders”. Later they had a chance to put their concerns to government officials.



As fighting in the south continues, there are reports of a similar influx of migrants to other northern regions such as Balkh and Shiberghan.



Muhammad Tahir is a Prague based journalist and writer specialising in Central Asian and Afghan affairs.