Tribal conflict in Afghanistan Fighting for land and water
Modern politics meets ancient grievances SURROUNDED by mountains
and carpeted with wild flowers and spent Kalashnikov cartridges,
the village of Shah-e-Nehru, like dozens of others nearby, lies
deserted. More than 4,000 Hazaras, a Shia Muslim ethnic minority
that is concentrated in Afghanistan's central highlands, are
thought to have been displaced from Behsood district, part of
Wardak province, in the past two months. Their oppressors are
bands of armed Kuchi nomads. The Kuchis, who are Sunni Muslim
and ethnic Pushtun, probably number fewer than 200 fighting men
together with their families and livestock. But 65 Hazara
villages have been emptied, according to Western officials, and
around a dozen people killed. This reporter's visit to Shah-e-
Nehru, with Hazara tribal elders and a few local police, ended
in headlong flight under a volley of rocket-propelled grenades
and sustained gunfire from mountains held by the Kuchis. Both
groups are poor and mar