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Risk nomadic way { November 6 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/international/asia/06KUCH.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/06/international/asia/06KUCH.html
November 6, 2002
A Nomadic Way of Life Is at Risk in Afghanistan
By CARLOTTA GALL
PAGHMAN, Afghanistan — Hundreds of families with camel trains, donkeys, sheep and goats were on the move in October, trailing south and east in tireless motion across desert trails and alongside roads. They were not refugees returning home or fleeing conflict, but Afghan nomads, Kuchi, migrating to their winter lands in a centuries-old tradition.
Young women, with beads and metal ornaments jangling from their hair and clothing, chased after wayward animals to clear them off the road, their colorful skirts billowing as they ran. Women also led camels, laden with the tents and household goods, while men roamed far and high on the steep hillsides with the bulk of the herds.
Kuchi have a special place in Afghan life. Both feared and romanticized, they have always been powerful within the tribal system, as the country's main providers of meat, sheepskins and wool, and as wealthy moneylenders and traders. But because of war and drought, their numbers have dwindled and those who survive have fallen into penury, their flocks having greatly shrunk. Many are now reduced to living off food handouts in refugee camps.
The situation the Kuchi face is so bad that Afghan and foreign aid officials have started a program to try to save them and their way of life.
Barmak Pazhwak, a policy adviser at the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, said helping the Kuchis survive had been identified by the government as one of its priorities for the winter, with a focus on providing water, food and employment and helping rebuild their herds.
Nobody really knows how many Kuchi there are, said Frauke de Weijer, a consultant from the World Food Program in Afghanistan, who has just completed a study on the vulnerability of the nomads. She estimates a population of 1.3 million to 1.5 million, down from 2 million to 2.5 million in the 1960's and 70's.
Not all the Kuchi were reached by the survey, but Ms. de Weijer listed some stark facts. "Of those who have recently fallen destitute, 50 percent have no livestock left," she said. "People who had, say, 500 sheep, now only have 100, and they are the richest ones.
"In the south, 75 percent have no livestock at all."
Of the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 displaced people living in southern Afghanistan, most are Kuchi, she said. "They are one of the most vulnerable populations in Afghanistan."
The poverty of the Kuchi is only too clear even in Kabul, where residents have seen Kuchi come unusually close to the city with their families this year, setting up camp in deserted factory compounds in an industrial area on the eastern edge of town.
A group of families from the Ibrahim Khel tribe said they had pitched their camp for a week so the men could find casual labor in the city to pay for the journey by truck back to their winter lands in eastern Afghanistan.
Without animals, and in particular without camels to carry their tents and household belongings, the Kuchi said they could not make the journey on foot as they used to.
"The people here are those who do not have herds," said Gul Jan, the elder who is the leader of the group. "Ninety percent do not have any livestock at all. That's why we are working here, to pay for the journey home."
Losing their herds has not just changed their pattern of movement, Ms. de Weijer said, it has also endangered their very survival.
The Kuchi have always lived by selling their young animals, dairy products, wool and sheepskins, or by bartering those goods for grain and other food. Movement to summer grazing lands is a necessity to keep the animals alive. A family of 12 to 20 people needs at least 100 sheep and goats to survive, the Kuchi say.
In Paghman, a district on the southwestern rim of the capital, another group of Kuchi live in 13 tents on a scrubby hillside. A mile farther on, there are another 25 tents. The children are dusty and run barefoot among the tents, which are covered with pieces of colored fabric and look like patchwork quilts.
These people are from the Khomari Khel tribe, a group of 500 families that traditionally move every year from Laghman Province, in eastern Afghanistan, to spend the summer up in the central highlands of the Hindu Kush, known as Hazarajat, an area mostly populated by ethnic Hazaras.
But in the last 20 years they have made the trip only a few times, the elders of the tribe said. This year they sat out the summer on the hot and dusty plains here near Kabul.
Their trouble began more than 20 years ago with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when Russian bombing raids and minefields killed many of their tribe, said Malik Gulbat, an elder. The almost continuous fighting since then has blocked their migratory routes, and the tensions from later factional fighting and the Taliban era still prevent their return to Hazarajat.
Then the drought of the last four years, the most severe in living memory, delivered the heaviest blow, depleting the Kuchi's herds to such an extent that many can no longer feed their families.
"Some of them were killed in the fighting and bombardments, some died from the drought; there was no grass and we sold some of them for meat," Mr Gulbat said of the 150 sheep and goats he once had. He said that two of his sons were killed by mines as they tended their herds near Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, once a major Russian base and now the headquarters for the American military.
He remembered his childhood with nostalgia. "The economy was good; our father and grandfather had good livestock; we were happy," he said. "The best thing was that there was no fighting then, no stealing, no armed robbery. We would move everywhere. We were safe. Now we have the worst life."
The last few years have been so hard that many Kuchi say they now want to give up the nomadic way of life, and they are asking the government for land so they can become farmers. "We are tired of this, we have no way to make ends meet," said Chaman Gul, 65. "If we had the chance we would stop living like this."
Some want help to restock their herds, but they have little faith the government will help. "No one has come from the government to talk to us," Mr. Gul said. "No one cares about the poor people except God."
People who raise livestock, like the Kuchi, are a necessary part of the rural system and their livelihood in normal circumstances is sustainable, Ms. de Weijer said.
Other Kuchi say they would prefer to keep their way of life if they can. "It's a good life moving — we don't get tired," said Pas Bibi, 50, a mother of eight, as she sat with a group on the ground in front of her tent. The women around her agreed.
The men added that they needed schools and veterinary and medical clinics that could move with the tribe for the migration. Twenty years ago there were boarding schools in Kabul for Kuchi children, but those were closed during the Soviet period and since then none of the children have been educated, they said.
The Kuchi need, above all, political representation in the government, Ms. de Weijer said. "They are not one entity, so there is not one solution," she said, "but there is a humanitarian need and a need to rebuild their livelihood."
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