The Justice Ministry has ordered enforcement of a court ruling requiring the evacuation of Kabul’s Omid-e-Sabz township over a land ownership dispute.
The Taliban’s Ministry of Justice has announced that a special court has ruled more than 1,500 jeribs of land in Kabul’s Omid-e-Sabz Township to be state property, a decision that could affect thousands of homeowners and landowners and further intensify long-running disputes over land ownership in Afghanistan.
In a statement issued on Monday, August 3, the ministry said the Taliban’s Special Court for State Land Cases had confirmed the ownership of 1,507.49 jeribs of land in Kabul’s Districts 6 and 13 in favor of the Taliban administration. According to the ministry, the ruling has now been referred to the Taliban’s Commission for the Prevention of Land Grabbing and Recovery of Usurped Lands for implementation.
The ministry stated that individuals who currently own houses or plots of land in Omid-e-Sabz Township should seek compensation directly from those who sold them the properties rather than from the current administration.
According to the ministry, the court issued its decision on April 20 after determining that the land had been surveyed, registered, and classified under five official cadastral sections as government-owned property. It added that the land had never been legally transferred to private individuals or legal entities, making all subsequent sales invalid under the court’s interpretation.
The ministry emphasized that the commission responsible for recovering allegedly usurped public lands has been instructed to implement the court’s decision without delay, reiterating that all rulings issued by the special court concerning state-owned land must be enforced immediately.
The decision is expected to have significant consequences for residents of Omid-e-Sabz Township, one of Kabul’s largest residential developments established during the past two decades. The township, located in western Kabul, is home to thousands of families, many of them from Afghanistan’s Hazara community, who purchased land or homes through private transactions over several years.
Omid-e-Sabz has long been associated with Mohammad Nabi Khalili, brother of former Afghanistan Vice President Mohammad Karim Khalili, who has been identified in previous reports as one of the project’s principal shareholders.
Since returning to power in August 2021, the Taliban have launched a nationwide campaign to review ownership of urban townships, residential developments, and agricultural land, arguing that large areas of public land were illegally occupied or sold under previous governments. The Commission for the Prevention of Land Grabbing has announced similar reviews across several provinces as part of efforts to recover what the Taliban describe as state property.
However, the campaign has generated growing concern among residents, property owners, and legal experts. Homeowners in several affected townships have repeatedly argued that they purchased their properties through documented contracts and officially registered transactions, warning that they risk losing their homes despite having acted in good faith.
Legal observers note that Afghanistan’s property sector has faced decades of overlapping land claims, weak cadastral records, multiple ownership documents, and inconsistent registration systems resulting from years of conflict, political change, and institutional collapse. These long-standing problems have made land disputes one of the country’s most persistent legal challenges.
Critics have also questioned the transparency and independence of the Taliban’s land adjudication process, arguing that affected residents have limited opportunities to challenge rulings or obtain impartial judicial review. Human rights organizations have previously warned that unresolved land disputes could increase social tensions, particularly in densely populated urban areas where thousands of families depend on disputed properties as their primary residence.
The latest ruling on Omid-e-Sabz Township is likely to add to uncertainty surrounding property rights in Afghanistan, as residents await further details on how the Taliban intend to implement the court’s decision and whether any mechanism will be established to compensate or protect homeowners who purchased land before the Taliban returned to power.
