KABUL – In a controversial land dispute decision, Taliban authorities have forcibly evicted the entire population of a Hazara village in central Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, siding with nomadic Pashtun tribes known as the Kuchis. The forced removal has intensified concerns over systematic land appropriation and ethnic targeting under Taliban rule.
Local sources confirmed that all 25 families, including elderly, women and children, from Rashk village in Panjab district were expelled on Monday, July 28. The village, home to mostly Hazaras and some Sayyids, was cleared after a Taliban court ruled in favor of the Kuchis in a decades-old land dispute.
Witnesses say the Taliban had issued a 15-day eviction notice to Rashk’s residents earlier this month. That deadline expired last Thursday. When villagers refused to leave voluntarily, an armed Taliban delegation, accompanied by Kuchi men, arrived in the village to enforce the order, locking homes and throwing residents’ belongings into the streets.
According to reports shared with KabulNow, half of the village had already been emptied before Monday’s operation. Sources on the ground say many male residents fled days earlier, fearing they would be forced to legitimize the eviction by providing thumbprints on official documents. Taliban and Kuchi forces reportedly brought padlocks to seal the houses once families were removed.
The contested land lies in the Pushta-e-Ghurghuri area of Panjab, and the dispute dates back as far as the 1950s. In 1973, a local man named Awaz Ali challenged Kuchi claims to the land. He was later abducted and disappeared, allegedly killed by Kuchis. His body has never been recovered, and residents say they believe it was burned.
A new legal complaint was filed in 2022 with a Taliban court in Bamiyan, in which villagers accused the Kuchis of murdering and incinerating Ali’s body. But that same year, the Taliban’s Commission for Resolving Kuchi and Settler Disputes ruled in favor of the Kuchis. Villagers described the decision as biased and have refused to recognize it.
Since then, local sources report that the Taliban have repeatedly detained and beaten residents who challenged the ruling. Monday’s mass eviction marks the most forceful action yet in what residents see as an ongoing campaign to displace Hazara communities.
Rights groups have raised concerns that the Taliban are using the courts to systematically evict non-Pashtuns from strategic or contested areas. Human Rights Watch documented similar forced evictions in Bamiyan, Daikundi, and Ghazni, all regions with significant Hazara populations. The report described these incidents as politically motivated and warned that the Taliban were enabling land grabs by empowering Kuchi groups while eliminating legal protections for settled communities.
Under successive governments before the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, Kuchi-settler disputes had remained unresolved but were often subject to mediated negotiation. The Taliban’s approach, however, has tipped the balance decisively in favor of the Kuchis, many of whom are ethnic Pashtuns with historic grazing routes across the country.
Many Kuchis traditionally spend winters in Pakistan’s tribal areas and summers grazing livestock mainly in central and northern Afghanistan. Some Kuchi leaders claim pasture rights granted by Afghan kings in the late 19th century. These claims, often lacking formal documentation, have long clashed with the lived reality of settled communities farming the land for generations.
Now, with Taliban courts consistently ruling in favor of nomads, Hazara residents say they have no legal recourse.
Observers say the eviction highlights how the Taliban are reshaping property rights and community dynamics through informal courts and ethnic favoritism.
As more land disputes emerge across central Afghanistan, local advocates are calling on international bodies to monitor and address what they describe as a growing pattern of dispossession and demographic engineering.
