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When Rabbits are in Charge of Carrots: Land Grabbing, Transitional Justice and Economic-State Crime in Afghanistan
Abstract
Afghanistan constitutes a good example of how the absence of transitional justice measures leads human rights violators of past regimes to remain in positions of power with impunity and to continue to engage in other forms of crimes. In particular, this article focuses on land grabbing as a form of economic-state crime in the country. Relying on data gathered from fieldwork in Kabul in 2013 and 2014, we illustrate that economic crime, which is instigated, supported and carried out by the state apparatus, is a form of state crime, which criminology needs to address more seriously. Criminological literature on socio-economic rights violations as a form of economic and thus state crime is very limited, particularly in conflict and post-conflict situations. By focusing on economic-state crime in the (post-)conflict situation of Afghanistan, we aim at bridging the classical divide between transitional justice studies on one hand and criminology on the other hand.
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Notes
All the quotes from interviews and local sources have been translated from Dari (Persian) into English by the first author.
Apart from the billions of international aid that came to Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 (Poole 2011), in its latest pledge the donor community in Brussels promised US$15.2 billion to the Afghan government (BBC News, 5 October 2016).
Other scholars stretch this argument even further and state that TJ should be considered as part of the ongoing conflict, that is, in the form of judicial intervention (Engstrom 2013). We adopt this line of argumentation for the case of Afghanistan.
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan2/Afghan0701-01.htm#P228_56166.
Jirib (also written as jerib) is the unit of land measurement in Afghanistan, which is standardized at 2,000 square metres or 1.5 hectares. Source: http://www.unc.edu/∼rowlett/units/dictJ.html.
Daily 8 AM is considered one of the leading newspapers of Afghanistan with a reputation to conduct high-quality investigative journalism, including a number of reports on land grabbing and mining mafia.