KABUL — A young Hazara farmer was shot dead by armed Kochi nomads in Behsud district of Maidan Wardak province on Tuesday, an incident that has intensified fears of systematic violence and displacement against Hazaras under Taliban rule.
Local sources told KabulNow that the victim, Mujtaba Naqavi, was killed around 11:00 a.m. on July 29 in the Shahr-e-Niru area of Hisa-ye Awal Behsud, after confronting armed Kochis who had brought their livestock onto his farmland. When Mojtaba tried to prevent the animals from destroying his crops, three armed Kochis opened fire, fatally shooting him.
Sources said Taliban authorities later detained the suspected perpetrators, though no formal statement has been issued.
The killing is the latest in a long and deadly pattern of violence tied to historical land disputes between nomadic Kochis, predominantly Pashtun, and the ancestral inhabitants, largely Hazara population of central Afghanistan. These disputes, especially in Behsud and neighboring districts, often erupt during seasonal migrations when Kochis move livestock into Hazara-populated highlands. While such tensions predate the current regime, they have intensified dramatically since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021.
Hazara residents and civil society groups say Kochi raids on Hazara farmlands have increased in frequency and brutality, with the tacit or direct backing of Taliban authorities. In Behsud, locals describe repeated incursions by armed Kochi groups, often accompanied by looting, house burnings, and forced displacements, without any meaningful intervention or justice.
The killing of Mujtaba Naqavi came just one day after Taliban authorities forcibly expelled 25 Hazara families from the village of Rashk Pushta-e-Ghurghuri in neighboring Bamyan province, following a court ruling in favor of Kochis. The eviction, carried out under Taliban orders, is part of a growing number of legal decisions that appear to systematically side with nomadic claimants over Hazara residents in long-disputed territories.
Human rights organizations have repeatedly warned that the Taliban’s handling of such land disputes has emboldened Kochi militias and facilitated a broader campaign of demographic change.
Under the previous republican government, attempts were made, albeit inconsistently, to regulate Kochi access to grazing lands and reduce seasonal violence. However, since 2021, many Hazaras report that the Taliban-run courts not only ignore these mechanisms but actively reverse them, often invoking religious or tribal justifications to undermine long-settled ownership.
With media freedom heavily curtailed and independent monitoring nearly impossible in many affected regions, the full scale of Kochi-led violence remains underreported.
