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Taliban sign lucrative deal allowing Arab tourists to hunt migratory birds

By Kreshma Fakhri 

The Taliban has announced the signing of contracts worth US$42 million, which allow Arab tourists to hunt migratory birds in Afghanistan. 

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Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s deputy minister of information and culture, confirmed to Zan Times on Wednesday, December 14, that the de facto government had signed contracts with tourists from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He says that these tourists now can legally hunt migratory birds for two months a year in Herat, Nimroz, Farah, and Helmand provinces. 

According to Zabihullah Mujahid, the bird hunting agreements were signed this year and “the duration of the contracts has been determined from two to five years.” 

Before the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, bird hunting was prohibited in the country, and according to the information from the National Environmental Protection Agency, nearly 60 species of birds face the threat of extinction due to illegal hunting. 

Bakhtar News Agency, which is run by the Taliban, quoted an official of the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture and wrote that “foreign hunters have been asked only to hunt birds that come from Siberia to Afghanistan and stay here for two months.” The migratory birds are called bustards, Bakhtar News Agency stated.  

Bustard is an increasingly threatened bird family. These migratory birds fly from Russia and other northern countries to the western provinces of Afghanistan and into parts of Iran in the month of October. Arab hunters are particularly interested in shooting this bird. 

In recent years, the media has reported cases of illegal bird hunting by Arabs in Afghanistan. In 2013, Radio Azadi quoted a g a source from the Department of Environmental Protection who said that 200 Qatari citizens, including a sheik, came to Farah province under the pretext of building a mosque but that, in reality, they were camping there to hunt birds.  

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