Thousands of ethnic Hazaras marched Tuesday in the Afghan capital and the central town of Bamiyan in a protest over a land dispute with nomads in which several people are said to have been killed. In Kabul, hundreds of riot police were out to control an angry and chanting crowd and a Hazara security team also tried to calm the protesters, an AFP reporter said.
The Kabul police official tasked with maintaining public order, Ghulam Rasoul, said 3,000 to 4,000 people took to the streets, but an AFP reporter said the crowd was likely three times larger. In Afghanistan's main Hazara town of Bamiyan, up to 1,000 people marched on the same issue and handed a written complaint to United Nations representatives, officials said.
The dispute erupted when Kuchi nomads, who are ethnic Pashtuns, moved into Wardak province's Behsud area, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Kabul, in recent months in search of grazing land for their animals. Hazaras allege that the nomads forced their way in and killed several people, and destroyed houses and crops.
There have been weeks of clashes in the area, with media reports of deaths, but interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said it was not clear how many people had been killed. "Our fact-finding team is working and investigating to determine exactly what number of people were killed," Bashary told AFP.
Ethnicity is a flashpoint issue in Afghanistan, which is still scarred by the 1992-1996 civil war in which different groups massacred, raped and tortured each other. The violence left around 80,000 people dead in Kabul alone. Rural Afghanistan sees regular land disputes often resulting in casualties but most go unreported. Disputes involving ethnicity are however often politicised.
Hazara leader and parliamentarian Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq is reported to be on hunger strike over the dispute which he has warned could re-ignite civil war. "The demonstration is to protest against the Kuchi invasion," said Akram Gizabi, spokesman for one of the groups involved in the Kabul protest.
"Kuchi people attacked Hazarajat (Hazara land). They killed our people and destroyed our land and the government does not do anything because the government supports such people," said another protester, Massoom Ali, 16. The demonstrators carried posters of nine people including four children they alleged were killed by Kuchis. Kuchi nomads, whose numbers are not known, move up from the south and east every summer in search of land for grazing.
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