Both Taliban, ALP take ushr from Tagab residents

KABUL and Afghan Local Police (ALP) for the last many years.

They say they had already paid 2,000 afghanis in tax against each 20,000 afghanis worth of pomegranates and prune harvests this year.

Shah Wais, a resident of Tagab district, said that first the Taliban started taxing them and later ALP forces.

“When the pro-government forces got aware about Taliban tax collection, they also started enforcing their own conditions on people and demanded tax,” he said.

Shah Wais said local people had no option but to pay the tax to both the Taliban and pro-government forces.

Shabir, another resident, said farming and gardening was their only source of income and it cost a lot of money to irrigate farms by using electricity-run generators.

But farmers could no longer benefit from farming because they had to pay ushr twice a season.

A local tribal elder, who wished to go unnamed, said that militants collected tax from people to buy weapons and then fight against the government.

He said tribal elders in the area had decided that people should pay tax to government forces instead of militants.

“But local people are violating this decision and they continue to pay tax to insurgents”, he addez.

Tagab district chief, Ziaur Rahman Khaksar, rejected people’s complaints and said no one collected tax in areas under their control.

He said Joibar was a wide area in Tagab district and militants might be covertly collecting ushr in some parts.

The Taliban did not comment on the issue. But the group’s spokesman had previously said that people voluntarily paid them ushr and zakat and they did not force anyone to do so.

Besides Kapisa, militants collect tax in other unstable areas of the country as well.

mds/ma

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