KABUL: Afghanistan’s Jogi tribe live on a knife edge: forced to abandon their nomadic lives after violence wrecked their traditional wandering grounds, they still face daily discrimination trying to carve a more sedentary existence in a country that does not recognise them as proper citizens.
Many from the ethnic minority opted to settle near Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of the relatively peaceful Balkh province, where they have built neat, mud-brick houses on rented land but their position is precarious.
The problem is, to get a tazkira you have to get registered with somebody of your family who already has a tazkira,” says Schmeding, who believes that the tazkiras held by Jogi are often fake.
“It’s very difficult to check if it’s legal or not,” she explains.
Most Afghans do not consider the Jogis fellow citizens, no matter how long they have been in the country, she says.
Often politicians will not speak for the group for fear of upsetting the majority of the public.
“It’s a sensitive issue,” agrees Homayoun Mohtaat, director of the population bureau at the Ministry of the Interior.
In 2006, he says, the Jogi petitioned Afghanistan’s parliament for official legal recognition.
