Since assuming power in August 2021, the Taliban have initiated a number of infrastructure projects in Kabul. But forced evictions and demolitions have seen ethnic minorities and vulnerable communities bear the brunt.
In satellite imagery, areas that once housed thousands of people in Kabul now show up as dusty stretches of empty land. The clearances were part of a pattern of demolitions that has seen families evicted in the name of new road and development projects.
Analysis of social media posts and satellite imagery carried out by CIR’s Afghan Witness project reveals that the Kabul Municipality cleared 1.5 million square metres of land in the Afghan capital between 15 August 2021 and 15 August 2024. The clearances mapped include residential areas, informal settlements housing displaced families, and to a lesser extent, commercial properties and farmland.
The findings are released in a new report today and are part of a collaborative investigation with Lighthouse Reports, Zan Times, Etilaatroz and The Guardian. The journalists spoke with evicted residents, non-profit organisations, and urban planners who worked with the former Afghan government to better understand the scale of the demolitions, the context in which they are taking place, and the communities most impacted.
Combining investigative reporting with open source analysis, the collaboration provides a comprehensive picture of how the Taliban is changing Kabul and shines a light on the human cost of the de facto authorities’ land clearance campaign.
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.
Risks of gender-based violence
NGOs have warned about the impact of evictions on women, especially those living in informal settlements. With many relying on insecure livelihoods from the informal sector, they say that women-headed households are far less likely to be able to afford alternative accommodation or the cost of returning to their place of origin. It could also leave women and girls more vulnerable to gender-based violence and child, forced and early marriage.
Zan Times interviewed a woman whose husband moved to Iran to work following the demolition of their home. She lost contact with him six months ago and is now the sole breadwinner, earning between one to three dollars a day offering door-to-door cleaning services.
She has struggled to get compensation. As a woman, she says she wasn’t allowed into the municipality office without a male guardian, but says that when women returned with their husbands “they still didn't let us in, delaying us repeatedly.”
‘Poorest most affected’
The Taliban say they have been demolishing residential properties to make way for infrastructure projects, often widening an existing road, or constructing a new one. In March 2024, ToloNews reported that 165 infrastructure projects were set to be implemented by the municipality before March 2025.
The projects are allegedly part of the “Kabul City Master Plan,” a land design and planning framework that has progressed through five iterations since 1964, with the most recent being the 2018 Kabul Urban Design Framework. Its purpose is to design an appropriate infrastructure layout to accommodate the exponential population growth the city has experienced in the last 60 years, including through road construction projects to alleviate high levels of traffic.
The demolition of informal settlements is justified in different ways, however.
In some cases, such as the August 2024 demolition, the Kabul municipality says it is part of efforts to reclaim land that has been previously grabbed. In October 2022, the Taliban set up the Land-Grabbing Prevention and Restitution Commission to address this issue.
A former Kabul municipality worker, who worked on settlement upgrading, expressed concern to Lighthouse Reports that initiatives like this one rarely hurt the land grabbers. “The people who grabbed the land are often not even in the country right now to take responsibility,” they said.
An urban planner who worked in another relevant ministry noted: “It’s the poor people that will be affected by these decisions.”
No compensation
Outside of informal settlements, the Taliban operates a tiered compensation scheme based on the materials a house is built with. But receiving full compensation appears reliant on residents having certain legal documentation proving ownership – and families rarely have such documentation. UN-Habitat estimates that more than 80% of properties in Afghan cities do not have formal ownership documents.
Lighthouse Reports, Etilaatroz and Zan Times interviewed a dozen people who had been evicted across Kabul. All but one say they have been unable to find permanent accommodation since their eviction, with most living in rented accommodation, often without basic amenities and struggling to afford rent.
Speaking to Zan Times, one woman, who said her family had lived in the house for 40 years before it was demolished in August 2023 said: “At first, they told us that they would compensate us and not leave us homeless, but once the houses were demolished, nobody cared about us,” she said. The family stopped going to the offices to ask for their compensation when they ran out of money for the transport fare.
Another homeowner who said her family had lived in their house for 50 years said: “Every time we go to the Taliban offices for compensation, they make different excuses, telling us to come back next week or two weeks later, saying the manager or deputy is not available or that there is no budget. These are the usual excuses they give us.”
Afghanistan has a long and complex history of land disputes – one that has been acknowledged as a key cause of conflict in the country. The Taliban’s evictions are set against a backdrop of economic precarity in Afghanistan – food insecurity is rampant and a combination of conflict and natural disasters has left 4.2 million internally displaced.
Co-publications from this investigation:
Afghan Witness: https://www.afghanwitness.org/reports/land-clearance-in-kabul
Lighthouse Reports: to follow
Zan Times: to follow
Etilaatroz: to follow