Hazaras and Shias, who make up a significant share of Afghanistan’s population, have faced systematic discrimination, forced displacement, and the seizure of their land and property under Taliban rule, and they have been subjected to collective persecution. The announced dispossession of the residents of Omid-e Sabz Township in Kabul, whose owners are mostly ethnic Hazaras of the Shia faith, is a prominent example of such collective persecution.
The Taliban have told the township’s residents that if they want to keep living in their own homes, they must pay rent to the regime. Local sources confirm that Taliban officials are carrying out house-to-house inspections. They are sealing and padlocking empty homes and handing out rent-payment forms to residents, whether owners or tenants. Under the Taliban’s directive, residents must pay 4,000 afghani per room to the regime, retroactive to April 2026. Any protest or request for reconsideration has been violently suppressed. Protesters were detained and tortured, and they were released only on condition that they vacate their homes immediately.
This treatment of the residents of Omid-e Sabz Township is different from that of residents of other townships that have been declared state property. In this article, I examine the different dimensions of the Omid-e Sabz Township case and the Taliban’s overall approach toward Hazaras and Shias.
The background
Omid-e Sabz Township covers more than 300 hectares of land on the northern slopes of Qorugh Mountain in western Kabul. Administratively, it falls within the Sixth and Thirteenth Districts of Kabul Municipality. Popularly known as Haji Nabi Township, after its owner, it has been one of the largest construction projects of the past two decades. It was built to a proper standard, with a good location and modern residential, commercial, educational, sports, religious, and healthcare buildings.
Most of its residents are Hazaras and Shias. According to published figures, about 11,500 families, totalling roughly 80,000 people, live in the township, and they have invested considerable sums in buying land and building on it.
A standard urban layout – wide paved roads, well-built buildings, public sanitation and cleanliness, a pleasant climate, and a good location – have turned this township on the city’s outskirts into one of Kabul’s most important and desirable areas. Within Afghanistan’s ethnic and religious landscape, it has also come to be seen as a symbol of progress and a source of prestige for Hazaras and Shias.
The basis for dispossession: political or legal?
The Taliban claim that the land of Omid-e Sabz Township belongs to the state and that they are seizing it as part of an effort to recover usurped land. However, the available documents and evidence show that the dispossession of the township’s residents is political and has no sound legal basis.
In late April of this year, the Taliban issued a statement declaring the entire township to be Emirate or state property, citing a ruling by the group’s Special Court for the Central Zone. Then, on August 1, the Taliban’s Minister of Justice told residents at a meeting that they had one week to vacate their homes. The minister, who is in charge of the plan to seize the township, delayed that action due to a widespread reaction from Hazara and Shia groups and organizations inside and outside the country, broad media coverage, and a trip to Kandahar by a delegation of township representatives to seek justice from the Taliban leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. Now, the minister is gradually pursuing the dispossession and seizure of the township through various tactics.
Various documents and evidence indicate that the Taliban have taken this step to limit the economic and cultural power of the Hazaras. Only a few of these political reasons are noted here.
According to available documents, Mohammad Nabi Khalili bought the township’s land in 1994 from the heirs of Malik Khushdil Khan. The first Taliban government, the republican government led by Hamid Karzai, and the Taliban’s own land clearance commission in their current period of rule have all recognized the ownership documents of Mohammad Nabi Khalili as valid.
According to a report by the newspaper Etilaat Roz, a 32-page document from the first Taliban government shows what the Taliban courts decided. That document has registration number 1338/743 and is dated 5/11/1422 AH (August 2001). In it, the Taliban’s special court, headed by Mawlawi Ghulam Haqqani, examined documents, heard witness statements, and received reports from investigative and government offices. The court then confirmed the ownership of the heirs of Malik Khushdil Khan and Malik Mohammad Zarin Khan on the basis of deeds dating from 1922.
This ruling by the first Taliban government matters because Mohammad Nabi Khalili, the township’s current owner, bought its land from Haji Qiyamuddin, an heir of Malik Khushdil Khan.
Under the Transitional Government led by Hamid Karzai, the Supreme Court confirmed two things on April 2, 2003: the ownership of the heirs of Malik Khushdil Khan and Mohammad Zarin Khan, and the transfer of that ownership to Mohammad Nabi Khalili.
In 2007, the General Directorate of State Cases had a lawsuit pending against Mohammad Nabi Khalili. The Primary Court ruled in Khalili’s favor on October 10, 2007, and the Court of Appeals upheld that ruling on May 16, 2009. At the final appeal stage, the Supreme Court dismissed the General Directorate’s case on October 11, 2009.
In 2025, the Taliban’s clearance commission produced a 10-page report, a copy of which was obtained by Zan Times. It also found Mohammad Nabi Khalili’s ownership documents to be legal, although it left the final ruling to the court.
Taken together, investment in Omid-e Sabz Township dates back to the 1990s. The ownership documents of both the previous owner and the current owner have been confirmed by successive governments and the relevant institutions. For this reason, one of the township representatives’ complaints is that the special court ignored the Taliban’s own clearance report.
Following the Taliban Minister of Justice’s deadline in August to vacate Omid-e Sabz Township within one week, a 30-member delegation of township representatives traveled to Kandahar to seek justice. They submitted an appeal for reconsideration to the office of the Taliban leader, Mullah Hibatullah. In their petition, the representatives described the special court’s ruling and the Minister of Justice’s decision to seize the township as unjust. They asked the Taliban leadership to order a review, citing several grounds, including that the heirs who sold the land held ownership documents, as does the current LAND owner, Haji Mohammad Nabi Khalili, and courts at all three levels confirmed those documents at different times. The township’s residents formally bought their properties from someone who held a title deed. And the township had a building permit from the government of the time.
At the bottom of the second page of the petition, a copy of which was obtained by Zan Times, an official in Kandahar has handwritten an instruction addressed to the Taliban Supreme Court: “Send us all papers and documents relating to the aforementioned matter through the proper legal channels.” Beneath this instruction are the stamp of the office of the Taliban’s Amir al-Mu’minin and a signature. The date recorded with the stamp and signature is 13 Rabi al-Thani 1448, which corresponds to September 25, 2026.
If the Taliban Minister of Justice’s drive to dispossess the residents and seize Omid-e Sabz Township is not politically motivated, one would expect him to follow the Taliban leader’s instruction – the township’s documents would be sent to the leader’s office, and the Taliban would suspend the seizure until that office announces its decision.
The Taliban Ministry of Justice’s insistence on dispossessing the township’s residents strengthens the suspicion that the move is politically motivated against the Hazara and Shia ethnic-religious group, because it plainly contradicts Hanafi jurisprudence. The Majallat al-Ahkam al-Adliyya, the Ottoman civil code, was compiled between 1869–1876 by a committee of mostly Hanafi scholars, and it is still cited in Afghanistan’s legal tradition. Article 906, in its section on the rules of usurpation, states:
“If the usurped property is land and the usurper has built on it or planted trees on it, the usurper is obliged to remove them. If removing the building or trees would damage the land, the owner of the usurped property may pay the value of the building or trees, assessed as if they were to be removed, and take possession of the land. However, if the value of the trees or building exceeds the value of the land, and the person built the building or planted the trees believing he had a lawful basis for doing so, then the owner of the building or trees has the right to pay the value of the land and take ownership of it. For example, suppose someone builds a structure costing more than the value of a plot of land he inherited from his father, and then another person comes forward as the rightful owner of that land. In that case, the builder may pay the value of the land and take ownership of it.” (Ali Haydar, Durar al-Hukkam Sharh Majallat al-Ahkam, Dar al-Jil, Beirut, 2003, vol. 2, p. 573)
In the case of Omid-e Sabz Township, it is very clear that the residents did more than merely believe they had a lawful basis: they were convinced the land had legal authorization. Moreover, the value of the township’s land has risen as a result of this very construction, and residents have invested several times the value of the land.
So, if the Taliban are not acting from political motives to forcibly displace Hazaras and Shias and seize their property and assets, then, according to this authoritative jurisprudential source, they must distinguish between the land and the buildings erected on it. That would hold even if the land were proven to have been usurped, which remains disputed. They should then collect from residents only the value of the vacant, undeveloped land.
The Taliban’s failure to follow this explicit jurisprudential guidance makes clear that the group is politically motivated to forcibly displace Hazaras and Shias. If their aim were otherwise, they would respect the rulings of jurisprudence, and of the Hanafi school in particular. The Taliban claim to implement Islamic law and jurisprudence and have abolished modern laws, including the constitution.
The Taliban’s broader approach to Hazaras and Shias
The program of forced displacement and seizure of Hazara and Shia land and assets is best understood within the Taliban’s broader policy toward this ethnic-religious group. As an extremist ideological group, the Taliban have been hostile to the Shia and Hazara community since they emerged as a political and military force in the 1990s. During their first period of rule (1996–2001), they used armed violence against Hazaras and Shias. They massacred civilians in Mazar-e-Sharif and in Yakawlang, Bamyan.
In their current period of rule, they operate in a more sophisticated way, having replaced open armed violence with structural violence. Hazaras and Shias have no representatives in the Taliban’s leadership or cabinet. Having monopolized power, the Taliban use their position of power to issue rulings, decrees, regulations, and procedures for a people who are effectively stateless. Within that framework, they pursue demographic change, forced displacement, and the seizure of Hazara and Shia property and assets by force of arms.
In the past few months alone, they have closed dozens of Shia and Hazara institutions and seized most of them. Institutions recently shut down or fully seized by the Taliban Ministry of Justice include:
- Ibn Sina University
- Khatam al-Nabiyyin University and Seminary
- Tamadon TV
- Rah-e Farda Radio and Television
- Khatam al-Anbiya Complex
- Shia High Commission
- Tebyan Cultural and Social Centre
- Awa News Agency
- Al-Zahra Clinic
At the same time, reports indicate that the Taliban are increasing pressure to evacuate Nawabad Township in Ghazni Province, the largest Hazara- and Shia-populated township there.
Sharif Ghazniwal is the pseudonym of a former university professor from Kabul.
