Mayors Claim Local Officials Involve in Land Grabbing

A number of mayors of the provinces have warned that some local officials are cooperating with powerful people in land grabbing; citing most of lands have been grabbed by land mafias and government officials.

They emphasized that land grabbing is the biggest challenge against the implementation of their plans.

“Nearly, 20 thousand acres of lands have been grabbed form Herat municipality. Local authorities are cooperating with land grabbers,” said Farhad Neyayesh, Herat mayor.

This comes as President Ghani has also said that land grabbing reaches its new peak as lands worth billions of dollars grabbed by powerful and land mafia groups increase activities amid the current situation in the country.

President’s special representative for reforms and good governance stressed on increase of mayors revenues.

“There will be no urban life, until mayors do not have independence in their work,” said Ahmad Zia Masoud, President special envoy for reforms.

In last 14 years, a large chunk of land has been illegally grabbed, mostly by powerful people at the behest of government, and no action has been initiated against them.

Land grabbing has emerged as the most ominous phenomenon in Afghanistan in recent years.

“Weak and inconsistent land management, endemic corruption and insecurity have permitted opportunistic land grabs by powerful elites, which local populations refer to as the ‘land mafia,’” says a report by UN Environment Programme (UNEP). 

“Thus far, the government has demonstrated little capacity or willingness to address land grabbing in a systematic way,” adds the report.

The practice of land grabbing has become worryingly rampant especially in rural areas where warlords continue to yield considerable clout.

A few years ago, Mayor in Baghlan province accused the local warlords of issuing threats to pressure municipal officials to fraudulently prepare ownership documents for the lands they had already grabbed.

“A large chunk of land has been usurped by influence-peddling power lords, and no steps have been taken by the government to wrest back the usurped land,” says Najeeb Mehmood, political analyst and Lecturer at Kabul University.

“The phenomenon of land grab has assumed alarming proportions in last one decade, mainly because the usurpers enjoy the patronage of senior government figures.”

In recent years, a number of ministers, provincial governors, mayors, and local power lords have been accused of grabbing land illegally, but none of them has been prosecuted so far.

A parliament member says it is important to disclose the names of high-profile people involved in it. “The report has not mentioned names of senior government ministers involved in land grabbing, which is baffling”.