2 hostile Badakhshan villages turned friendly

FAIZABAD (Pajhwok): Two villages in northeastern Badakhshan province turned hostile in the struggle to get upper hand in conducting more crowded Jumma prayer and collect more Zakat money, according to a local resident Kamila.

The 60-year-old lady said the enmity was recently ended due to the mediation of local tribal elders and an environment of friendship had been established.

All the 500 families of Hisarak Bala and Hisarak Payen villages in Juram district were indulged in enmity because of claiming superiority over each other in attending to prayers, collecting Zakat and conscription of youth to guard the jungles, it made the life of all villagers miserable, the residents claimed.

Kamela said the mediation and struggles of the local tribal elders have changed the atmosphere of enmity into friendly relations.

Kamela has bitter memories of those times, she told Pajhwok Afghan News: “Since I remember, these twin villages live in enmity and fight to each other, we have never seen neither a good day nor a calm night”.

As an instance she said: “Once we had a ceremony for the wedding of my son last year, when the people went to Maghrib prayer to mosque, they came late there were some gun shots, I was desperate and my blood pressure went up and I fell unconscious. When I became conscious, I saw my son sitting near me, he told me that the people of other village had come and asked for Zakat, so the people of our village disagreed them and they fought each other, the fires were shot too”.

Similar incidents about such issues like attending to prayers, giving Zakat or selecting guards for forests, between the people of these villages occurred many times in the past, she said.

With the struggles of the tribal elders, the enmity and problems got solved and all the villagers live in peace and friendship, she added.

She expressed hope that such quarrels will never happen again, the peaceful life will continue and no differences between the people will never happen again because such small difference generated enmity among the people.

Amruddin, 36 and a villager of Hesarak Bala is happy about the peace, he thinks such quarrel and disagreements endangers the peace and personal safety.

“We all need to work for the peace and put all the differences aside to prevent all big fights,” Amruddin said.

The people of these two villages were competing and fighting even for the first line of prayer congregation, so they separated their mosques.

“The issue of prayer was not the only matter of difference among the villagers, everyone was competing to assign his villagers to guard the forests as well” he said.

The tension and grudge among the people of these villages was rising when they were competing for the first line of prayer, to assign the ones who would guard the forests or collect Zakat.

“The presence of irresponsible gunmen in these villages was another factor who were looking for their own interests in fighting and it further added the fuel to fighting among the people during the past two years” Amruddin added.

Abdul Samad Saboori, a mediator and a tribal elder, urged all the residents of these villages to work for peace, because the big fights emerge from the small ones and petty differences.

“Every fight or claim between the people, families, villages, residents of district or countries are usually small, if it is not prevented, it can have devastating results for any community”, Saboori said.

It is important for everyone to accept each other, because during such differences and quarrels all the political, social, economic and cultural interests suffer damage or face danger, he added.

“I urge the involved people in such fighting or quarrels to take the way of bilateral understanding” Saboori said.

Muizzudin Ahmadi, the head of information and culture department said, we have also received some reports of the physical fighting between the people of these villages, sometime armed conflicts, the ones who wanted superiority over the others were the armed forces of the previous government so we united our hands with the local tribal elders in search of solutions.

Ahmadi urged the locals to accept each other and sit together at the time of conflicts emerging and solve all such issues by the root causes.

Aw/nh