It's always Women!

Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, My ex-wife.. Why is it always women who are the cause of trouble and strife?

Afghan blood feud ends after 30 years

The men of an Afghan village have emerged from their fortress homes, safe for the first time in 30 years after the end of a blood feud which had claimed more than 300 lives.

The settlement of Mohammad Rahim is celebrating the end of a war that many believe, though few actually remember, began for age-old reasons – “Zan, Zar, Zemin”, or Women, Gold, Land.

For three decades it ran unchecked and confined the male population to their homes, which were quickly turned into fortresses with bricked-up windows and gun loopholes in the walls. The locals say that even the Taliban took one look at the chaos and went elsewhere.

“It started over Sambola’s widow,” said Malik Abdul Wahab, the leader of one of the sides. “Ashmir Khan was supposed to marry her. But Haji Nasruddin Khan married her instead. Asmir Khan shot Nasruddin, and that is how it began.

The fighting split Mohammad Rahim along clan lines, involved the entire population, and spilled into neighbouring Weygel. A total of 318 men were killed in the fighting, which involved 160 families.

The situation inverted the norms of Afghan society as only women, protected from harm under Pashtunwali, the Afghan code of conduct, were able to continue the running of the village. As their menfolk traded fire from the houses and alleyways above, the women toiled in the fields together without incident.

“Sometimes they shot us, sometimes we would go and attack them. He lost two nephews, three cousins and one uncle to the fighting.

Then abruptly, at the end of May, the governor of Nangahar province, Gul Agha Sherzai, stomped in and announced the fighting must end.

Mr Sherzai called a jirga, or council session of elders, to end the madness.

“The problem was that for the last thirty years the government was very weak,” said Mr Wahab, neatly spearing the major problem that continues to beset rural Afghanistan. “No outsiders ever came to negotiate an end to our dispute.”

Without the intervention, locals say that Afghan male pride would have kept the fighting going into infinity.

“Since I was a 20-year-old I have been in a prison except this last month. Now we sit together, we joke, we are like brothers,” said Mr Wahab, gesturing at Ger Han Khan, a toothless old mountain man who used to be his sworn enemy.

“I lost 11 men of my family. This was all just foolishness.”

See - Men saw reason and ended the feud, started over a woman..