Afghanistan: Khost Residents Armed to the Teeth

A six-month investigation conducted by IWPR suggests that 50,000 firearms are held in private hands in the Khost province of southern Afghanistan. With a total population estimated at 480,000 in a 2006 survey, that is one weapon for nearly every family in the province.

When people are involved in personal or tribal conflicts, they reach for their weapons without any fear of the law. As a result, scores of people are killed or wounded every year.

Afghan law requires a license for any firearm that is not for hunting, and the penalty for unlawful possession is a prison sentence. In reality, all kinds of unlicensed weapons are readily available at local bazaars.

Although neither the police nor human rights agencies have exact numbers on gun-related casualties, the provincial public hospital in Khost saw more than 100 people killed or wounded by guns as a result of personal or tribal feuds in 2010, according to Dr Hedayatullah Hamidi, head of the provincial health department in Khost.

Khost men claim they keep unlicensed weapons to protect themselves and their families.

They can easily buy them at a market in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan located on the Pakistani side of the border. Kalashnikov assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, old bolt-action rifles and handguns manufactured in China and Russia are displayed at the market alongside Pakistani-made weapons.

Khost province shares a 196-kilometre border with the Kurram tribal agency of Pakistan. Dozens of trucks are used each day to smuggle goods, including arms and ammunition, between the two countries, according to Naqibullah Motunwal, a political analyst in Khost.

An IWPR reporter conducted 120 interviews in 60 villages in Khost's Gurbez, Tanai, Nader Shah Kot and Mandozai (Ismail Khel) districts. A total of 98 out of the 120 people interviewed said they owned a weapon. In more than 80 per cent of the 60 villages IWPR visited, at least one person admitted owning a weapon. Interviewees estimated that two-thirds of all households possessed between one and five weapons.

"There are 500 households in our village, and two out of three households have ready access to weapons," said Talib Jan, 41, a high school teacher in Ismail Khel district.

"I have two AK-47 assault rifles made in Russia at my house," he said. "I clean them once a month with diesel and gun oil. I bought them at the Zadran arms market four years ago. One cost 65,000 Pakistani rupees [about 720 US dollars] and the other 75,000 rupees [830 dollars]."

Mohammad Nur, a villager from Matun, near the town of Khost, says he and his three brothers keep four AK-47s at their house.

"My brothers and I bought rifles to protect ourselves from being harmed by others. Most of the time we go about armed," he said.

It is normal for village men to show off a weapon. They say life without a gun is impossible these days.

Hesmatullah, a 25-year-old from the village of Dab in the Tanai district, has no job but owns a Kalashnikov that cost him about 1,000 dollars, which took him several years to save up.

"I have got used to having a gun on my shoulder. If I don't have it for a short while, I feel as if I have lost something," he said.

While the arms markets are somewhat hidden from view from government agencies in Khost, access to them is not so difficult.

Sayed Rauf, a 23-year-old from the village of Chini village in Lakan district who last month completed his undergraduate programme in Khost University's department of literature, said he asked one of his close friends to help him buy a Kalashnikov. Rauf finally managed to buy one for 1,052 dollars at a weapons shop near a jewellery market in Khost city.

"Living in Khost without a Kalashnikov is impossible," Raouf said.

It is not just ordinary people who buy guns. Tanai district government chief Sayed Ahmad Wafa admits he has an illegal weapon at his home, even though the government supplies him with four bodyguards.

"I bought a Russian-made Kalashnikov, which doesn't belong to the government, for my house," Wafa said. He estimated that 70 per cent of the residents of Tanai district's 124 villages own between one and three guns.

"In the villages of Tanai district alone, there are about 10,000 Kalashnikovs," he said.

As well as young men, older tribesmen feel that having a weapon on their shoulder is a symbol of manhood and bravery.

Tur Haji, a 63-year-old tribal elder from Kondi Ister Matun, wears a leather belt across his chest that holds bullets for his Russian-made Makarov pistol. A tall man with a heavy beard, he strides around Khost city like an American cowboy.

"All of our tribes men carry weapons," Tur Haji said. "I carry a pistol to protect myself. I am head of my tribe. Dozens of tribal heads have been killed in this city. Carrying a weapon is essential for me."

But this access to illegal weapons contributes to the security problems in the region, according to Khost provincial governor Abdul Jabar Naimi. He says the government is trying to find new ways to collect these weapons.

He said officials managed to convince elders from four tribes – Gurbez, Shamal, Moqbel, and Mangal – members of which are often killed and wounded in disputes – to turn in their guns before the end of 2011 under the Afghan government's Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) program.

"We set a condition that anybody who violates the agreement will be fined two million afghani [40,000 dollars]," Naimi said.

He did not say whether the government had collected any fines, or how it would use the money. But he said men from the four tribes had turned in more than 100 weapons, including AK-47s, heavy machine guns and handguns.

"People in Khost have one or two Kalashnikovs to protect themselves and their houses, so collecting all of these weapons will be impossible for the government in the short term," the governor said.

Khost provincial police chief commander Sadr Mohammad Haji agrees that the biggest challenge to security and rule of law is the availability of illegally-held guns, which encourages fighting among tribes in mountainous areas.

He said the police had stopped many inter-tribal tribal conflicts in the one year he had been in the job, by disarming what he called "irresponsible men". He said that during four separate sweeps of the area, police confiscated between 40 and 60 weapons.

"We collected Kalashnikovs, machine guns, even Russian-made RPG launchers," the police chief said.

Ten years ago, people in Khost had little or no access to the weapons and bullets that now hang on their walls. These days, it is as if Khost's men believe that if life without oxygen is possible, life without a weapon is not.