The Taliban’s latest decision to claim around 10,000 acres of land in Balkh is far more consequential than the size of the disputed property alone suggests. It is another episode in a growing campaign through which the Taliban are identifying land they describe as “usurped”, reclassifying large areas as state property and ordering those occupying them to surrender possession.
The latest case concerns roughly 10,000 acres in the Momenabad area of Nahr Shahi district. The Taliban’s Ministry of Justice says a special court reviewed ownership documents, information from government departments and records from real estate offices before ruling that the entire tract belongs to the government.
That explanation, however, leaves the central question unanswered: what meaningful avenue exists for the people whose land is being taken to challenge the ruling?
The Taliban may call the process land reclamation. For those losing homes, farms or property, the distinction between reclamation and dispossession can become painfully thin when the same regime controls the investigation, the commissions, the courts and the enforcement machinery.
And Balkh is not an isolated case.
A Pattern Far Larger Than Balkh
The European Union Agency for Asylum has documented the Taliban’s seizure of large areas of land subsequently reclassified as state property in provinces including Ghor, Maidan Wardak, Logar, Takhar, Nuristan, Badghis, Panjshir, Badakhshan, Nangarhar and Kabul. It has also found that the reclamation process has been marked by a lack of transparency and legal safeguards, with affected landowners often denied meaningful opportunities to appeal, present ownership documents or obtain compensation.
That matters because the Taliban’s terminology can make a highly consequential act sound like a routine administrative correction.
Calling land “usurped” does not, by itself, establish that it was illegally occupied. Calling it “Emirati” does not, by itself, settle a contested ownership claim. Those conclusions require a credible process in which competing claims can be independently examined and the affected parties can meaningfully defend their rights.
That is precisely where the Taliban’s system comes under scrutiny.
When an authority possesses the power to determine that land belongs to the state, appoint the bodies investigating the claim, control the courts hearing the dispute and then enforce the resulting order, the question is no longer simply who owns a particular field. It is whether the people affected have any genuine legal protection against the state itself.
The Human Cost Behind the Paperwork
Afghanistan has had land disputes for generations. They involve inheritance, competing deeds, returning refugees, tribal claims, community boundaries and disputes over agricultural resources. The Taliban did not create every one of these conflicts.
What has changed is the concentration of political and judicial power in the hands of the Taliban.
The EUAA has noted that land disputes increased after the Taliban takeover as the balance of power and local representation changed. It also reported that disputes disproportionately affected minorities and internally displaced people, while Taliban authorities have reportedly supported Pashtun communities in some conflicts with non-Pashtun populations.
That history makes every major land decision politically sensitive.
The concern is not merely that someone might lose a piece of property. Land determines where families live, where farmers cultivate crops, where communities establish themselves and whether displaced people can return to their former homes.
The consequences therefore extend well beyond property law.
In some parts of Afghanistan, land disputes have already been accompanied by forced displacement. In Ghor, for example, more than 100 families were reportedly forcibly displaced in 2025 amid a tribal land dispute.
Earlier, Human Rights Watch documented the forced eviction of Hazara families in Balkh’s Qubat al-Islam area. Taliban officials said the evictions were based on a court order, while the affected residents said they had owned the land for decades.
The pattern is therefore troubling precisely because a court order does not automatically make an eviction just. The legitimacy of the outcome depends upon the legitimacy and independence of the process that produced it.
Mazar-i-Sharif Offers Another Warning
The latest 10,000-acre decision also comes against the backdrop of other land seizures in Balkh.
In August, the Taliban announced the seizure of hundreds of acres in Mazar-i-Sharif, including approximately 329 acres in one case.
Taken separately, each decision can be presented as an effort to recover government property. Taken together, however, they reveal something much larger: a regime systematically expanding its authority over land through administrative commissions and specialised judicial mechanisms.
And this is why the word “another” matters.
Another land seizure means another opportunity to ask whether the process is transparent. Another reclassification means another test of whether private ownership can withstand a state claim. Another eviction order means another question about whether affected families have a meaningful remedy.
The cumulative effect matters far more than any single announcement.
Reclamation or Concentration of Power?
There is a legitimate principle behind recovering land that genuinely belongs to the state. Governments have the right to protect public property from illegal occupation. Afghanistan, like any country, has a legitimate interest in resolving fraudulent or fabricated land claims.
But legitimate state ownership cannot become a blank cheque.
A credible land-reclamation system would publish clear criteria, disclose the evidence supporting major decisions, allow competing claimants to present their documents, provide an independent appeal mechanism and establish procedures for compensation where appropriate.
Without those safeguards, “reclamation” risks becoming whatever the authorities say it is.
The EUAA’s assessment is particularly important here because it does not describe the Afghan land dispute problem merely as a political accusation. It specifically records concerns over transparency and legal safeguards and notes cases in which landowners were unable to appeal, present ownership documents or obtain compensation.
That is the fault line running through the Taliban’s entire land campaign.
The Demographic Question Cannot Simply Be Dismissed
There is an even more sensitive dimension.
Land and demographics in Afghanistan are inseparable. Control over land can determine which communities remain in a particular area, which communities return, and which communities eventually disappear from it.
EUAA reporting notes that Taliban involvement in land disputes, particularly where the authorities sided with Pashtun Kuchis, has resulted in the eviction of local populations. One assessment also records allegations that such disputes have been used as part of broader efforts to consolidate political and military control over affected areas.
This does not mean every Taliban land-reclamation decision is necessarily an exercise in demographic engineering. That conclusion would require evidence on a case-by-case basis.
But neither can the demographic implications simply be ignored.
When land is seized, communities are displaced and ownership is reassigned under the authority of a regime dominated by a particular political and military structure, the social consequences can last for generations.
The Taliban’s Greatest Contradiction
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the campaign is the Taliban’s own rhetoric about land grabbing.
The movement has long presented itself as an opponent of corruption, usurpation and unlawful seizure. Yet now it possesses the machinery of government that can determine which land is “usurped” and which land belongs to the state.
That creates an uncomfortable contradiction.
The Taliban are no longer merely fighting over land from outside the state. They are the state deciding the dispute.
And that makes institutional safeguards indispensable.
If an ordinary Afghan cannot challenge a government claim to his property before an independent court, then the existence of a formal court does not necessarily provide meaningful justice. If ownership documents can be rejected by an authority whose decision cannot effectively be appealed, then possession ultimately rests not on law but on power.
That is the danger hidden behind bureaucratic terminology.
Ten Thousand Acres Is the Question, Not the Answer
The 10,000 acres in Nahr Shahi should therefore not be viewed merely as another figure in Afghanistan’s endless catalogue of land disputes.
It is a test of the Taliban’s claim that their system can deliver justice.
If the land genuinely belongs to the state, the authorities should have little reason to fear transparency. Publish the evidence. Allow the alleged owners to challenge it. Permit independent scrutiny. Provide a meaningful appeal. Explain what happens to those displaced.
But if the answer is simply that a Taliban commission investigated, a Taliban court ruled and Taliban authorities ordered the occupants out, then the process raises a much larger question than ownership of one tract in Balkh.
How much of Afghanistan can be transformed from private or disputed property into state-controlled land through decisions made by a system with no independent check on its power?
The answer will determine whether the Taliban’s “land reclamation” campaign becomes a genuine effort to resolve Afghanistan’s historic property disputes, or another mechanism through which power is converted into possession.
And with another 10,000 acres now claimed, that question is becoming harder to avoid.
