The impact on ethnic minorities
Afghan Witness mapped demolitions in 15 out of Kabul’s 22 Police Districts (PDs). Investigators found that residential properties were impacted in almost half of the demolitions, rendering thousands of families effectively homeless.
While the demolitions are city-wide, they appear to be impacting ethnic minorities disproportionately. One market trader remarking on the changes in the capital told Lighthouse Reports, “road expansions are happening all around Kabul, but all neighbourhoods are not suffering the same way”.
Kabul West accounted for the majority of destruction, with over 605,000 square metres of land cleared, most of which impacted residential properties. The largest residential area clearance was seen in PD 13, a predominantly Hazara area, followed by PD 17, which is home to mainly Tajik communities.
Reports of chaos and violence
Over a third of the total area of land demolished impacted informal settlements housing Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and displaced Afghans returning from neighbouring countries. These were located across the North, East and West of Kabul.
Kabul’s informal settlements are typically home to low-income residents previously displaced by conflict or climate in Afghanistan. Residents rarely have documents and face constant eviction threats. However, many have lived there for years – a September 2023 survey found that 49% of all households in Kabul informal settlements had lived there for over five years, and 12% for over ten years.
Residents say they have no space to challenge the demolitions of their homes under the current administration. Speaking to Lighthouse Reports, one resident from an informal settlement in north Kabul’s PD4, which was demolished in August this year, said: “There is no place to complain, and even if you complain, there is no one to hear you”.
The Kabul municipality posted a series of photos on X (formerly Twitter) showing bulldozers destroying the structures on 4 August 2024. It stated that the land had been seized by “opportunists and usurpers” and was being “cleaned”.
Residents told Lighthouse Reports that their houses were demolished while people were still inside them, causing multiple injuries. One resident likened the scene to the earthquake in Herat, with houses and belongings buried.
Demolitions have left families in precarious situations. Without the money to rent a house in the nearby areas, one resident who lived in the settlement for the last 20 years said he is now living in an abandoned factory. “We don’t even have tents, we have just shelters that we made from plastic pieces…some days, we don’t have anything to eat, we sleep with an empty stomach.”
During the demolition of another large informal settlement in July 2023, this time in PD 22, east Kabul, field teams working for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) were told by evicted families that a four-year-old and 15-year-old lost their lives. The NRC estimates that over 2,000 families were left homeless.
A resident from that settlement described the scene to Lighthouse Reports: “Women, children and elderly men were begging for them to stop the destruction until we can find a shelter, but they wouldn’t listen … They had pipes and sticks in their hands and they wouldn’t let anyone say a single word.”
He claims to have lost a niece in the aftermath of the demolition after the family were left without shelter in the summer heat. According to the man, the young girl had diarrhoea and was taken to hospital after losing consciousness and later died.
