Hazara Nation

DailyTimes

The attack was two days ago but fire still smoulders in a house and two shops in a small village in remote central Afghanistan.

“The nomads came down from the mountains, they broke doors and looted the shops,” says a toothless old man who owns one of the destroyed shops, a grocery store. “What can I do now? I lost everything.” This village of a half-dozen traditional mud brick homes in Behsud, 150 kilometres east of Kabul, is the latest target in a conflict which has for the past five years pitted Kuchi nomads against Hazara settlers.

It is an increasingly violent standoff over grazing land that has ethnic undertones, as the Kuchi from Afghanistan’s majority Pashtun tribe have a bloody history with the Hazara. “Kuchis attacked our house yesterday, they took away our animals,” says another Hazara, 23-year-old Mohammad Yacine. “We escaped but they burned my house.” He has come to the village to find help.

“They fired at us and we couldn’t respond because we have no weapons. If we had, we wouldn’t have left our area,” he says, standing in a group of men holding old rifles or Kalashnikovs. “They want us to leave this place so they can claim our lands.” The Hazaras, a minority of Mongol origin, have lived and farmed in these valleys overlooked by bare hills for centuries. About 130 years ago, the Kuchi started arriving every summer to graze their camels, sheep and goats - a right they say was given to them by royal order.

“The area does not have the capacity for more than the people who already live here,” says Abdul Raza Razahi, a Hazara parliamentarian for Wardak province which includes Behsud. afp