September 12, 2003	Friday	Rajab 14, 1424

KABUL, Sept 11: Top Afghan ministers are illegally occupying land and should be removed from their posts, a visiting UN-appointed, independent rapporteur on housing rights said on Thursday.

Miloon Kothari, concluding a two-week visit to assess the housing and land situation throughout the country, named powerful Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Education Minister Yunus Qanooni as offenders.

He warned that property disputes could plunge Afghanistan back into “decades of conflict”.

“Essentially what we have found there is that ministers and people at the highest level are involved in occupying land and in demolishing the homes of poor people,” he told reporters.

“In fact a number of ministers, including the minister of defence, is directly involved in this kind of occupation and dispossession of poor people, some of whom have been there for 25 to 30 years.”

Kothari, who was appointed by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), said military commanders and senior defence ministry officials as well as Fahim and Qanooni were involved in the land seizures.

“It’s a very long list. People at the very highest level are involved in this occupation.”

Fahim’s spokesman Gulbuddin denied the defence or education ministers were involved in any illegal land grabs.

“We strongly deny any involvement of the defence minister or Qanooni in such things,” he told AFP.

“The Taliban could not occupy people’s lands and houses so how could we do that.”

Qanooni’s spokesman was unaware of the allegations.

Kothari said the alleged land-grabbers had taken advantage of Afghanistan’s chaotic post-conflict situation to seize property.

“There has to be a change and ministers that are very directly involved have to be removed, I don’t see what else can be done,” said Kothari, who will present a report on his mission to the UNCHR in April next year.

He said the land grabs and mass displacements of poor Afghans was a major cause of the insecurity besetting the country.

It was also hindering aid and reconstruction projects as the country struggles to recover from 23 years of war and drought.

“There is a great climate of insecurity that is being created across the country, which is for reasons other than armed conflict; it’s for reasons of occupation, it’s for reasons of land speculation, it’s for reasons of property conflict,” he said.

“Unless these issues are addressed at the judicial level, at all other levels, what we are seeing in Afghanistan today is that we are sowing the seeds for decades of conflict ... due to a land and property and housing crisis.”

Kothari said there was an “urgent need” to establish a national housing and land policy and set up a land commission to tackle the problem.

The special rapporteur last week criticised as “gross violations” the forced eviction of some 30 families and bulldozing of their houses built on defence ministry land in Kabul.

Evicted locals, many of whom were former ministry workers, had told AFP they were beaten by police, given no advance notice of the eviction and offered nowhere else to go. Others were still in their houses when the bulldozer moved in.

Kothari said growing land speculation, particularly in the cities, was “putting land and housing out of the reach of the poor”.

Rents have rocketed since the fall of the Taliban, with houses rented for 200-300 dollars in 2001 now fetching up to 4,000 dollars a month. —AFP