Who Owns The Land Where Former U.S. And Coalition Bases Were Built On In Afghanistan?

Rashid Gul in front of the military base that was built on his land in Panjwai District, Kandahar. Residents believe the occupation of the land ruined the irrigation system.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times 

New York Times: U.S. Leaves Behind Afghan Bases — and a Legacy of Land Disputes 

The U.S.-led coalition seized land for hundreds of military bases, most now held by the Afghan military. Villagers have fought for years to collect compensation and to get their property back. 

At harvest time, as neighbors and relatives reap their crops, 80-year-old Jamal Khan can only look in despair on the plot of land that was the source of his family’s livelihood — until the American forces arrived over a decade ago. 

Just before sunset one day, armored vehicles drove into fields of knee-high corn stalks, claimed about 30 acres that were co-owned by about as many families and quickly cordoned off the area with barbed wire. This was now Combat Outpost Honaker-Miracle, one of the roughly 1,000 military installations the United States and its coalition partners would prop up across Afghanistan. 

“In the whole vastness of the lord’s world, I had this plot of land and this house that I am living in and nothing else,” said Mr. Khan, who lives the Watapur District of Kunar Province, in eastern Afghanistan. “We told them this is our private land, how do you suddenly put up here? They said nothing.” 

Mr. Khan is one of countless Afghans whose land became a casualty of the U.S.-led war and the sprawling military infrastructure born from it. They have been forced to navigate a maze of Afghan and American bureaucracy and indifference, stoking a growing bitterness toward coalition forces and the Afghan government alike. 

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WNU Editor: War always destroys property. That is a given. And these land/property disputes are only going to be settled when the war is finally over, and the Afghan government is in a position to bring stability and eventual compensation to these property owners. In the meantime. Good luck on trying to get your land back let alone being compensated.