| Kuchis Losing Their Way IWPR
04/26/2003
By Danish Karokhel
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Many nomadic farmers are being forced to abandon their centuries-old way of life.-existent." The Kuchi tribes of Afghanistan are increasingly being thwarted from making their traditional migration due to hostility from local residents. Hundreds of families have ceased taking their herds on the annual journey from eastern regions to summer pastures in central parts of the country because the latter are being used by local farmers. And Kuchis moving north from western areas this month were driven back by attacks in which some were killed. Tension between nomads and non-migratory people is as old as history, but the wars in Afghanistan and recent years of drought have exacerbated the troubles, and peace has not resolved them. War prevented some Kuchis from returning to their summer grazing lands for many years and, in the interim, locals converted the pasture to farmland. During Taleban times, Kuchis in a number of areas angered locals by allowing their animals to graze on fields used for agriculture. Earlier this month, about 60 people were killed in fighting that broke out between nomads and locals in Badghis province in northwest Afghanistan, said Haji Mir Hamza, the leader of Herat Kuchis. Hamza was among 10 of the community's leaders who came to Kabul last week to ask for help from central government. Shahbaz Ahmadzai, advisor to President Karzai on nomad affairs, confirmed that Kuchis had been killed in the fighting, but said local Pashtuns were among the dead as well. Hamza said commanders of warlord Ismael Khan, governor of Herat, joined in the battle on the side of the locals, who are predominantly Tajiks and Uzbeks. The locals accused the Kuchis of being members of the Taleban and al-Qaeda. This and similar battles forced the Kuchis back to Helmand and Herat provinces from their pastures in Faryab, Badghis, Jowzjan, and Mazar-e-Sharif. An official in Jowzjan, who did not want to be named, said that in March, a brother of local commander Kamal Udin killed a Kuchi and took his 200 sheep, and that in the past two months there have been 150 complaints to the provincial governor about violence against nomads and theft of their animals. He said the authorities have so far failed to do anything about the incidents. The official added that in some cases former Kuchi lands in Jowzjan and other northwestern provinces have been converted to poppy growing, and that there is general opposition to the nomads from locals who want their region to be only one ethnicity - Uzbek and Turkmen. The Taleban's good relations with the Kuchis - both are ethnically Pashtun - has complicated matters. Under the Taleban, some Kuchis returned to provinces that had been battlefields during the war against the Soviets and subsequent civil conflict. Locals in those areas had converted the nomads' traditional pasturelands to farming, but the latter felt they had the right to allow their animals to graze on the crops. In northern Kabul, the Taleban encouraged the Kuchis to let their animals eat trees and tall grasses to remove hiding places for their opponents. The Kuchis protest that they are not Taleban or al-Qaeda.
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