Afghanistan and its Birds

By Kai Pflug

As I am very interested in birds, I naturally paid attention to them during my recent trip to Kabul. Indeed, they are quite visible in Kabul.

For example, in the Kabul Zoo – though seeing birds in that environment makes me feel sad.

Or in the city center, particularly around one specific mosque.

There is also a famous bird market in the bazaar area, though according to TOLOnews, the bird sellers there complain about a lack of customers, believing that the rise in poverty and unemployment is the reason for their falling bird sales (source).

The official policy toward birds and bird protection is a bit confusing to me. On the one hand, bird hunting is prohibited in Afghanistan and seems to be punishable, particularly in provinces including Farah and Nimruz, where some people were arrested for hunting birds.

On the other hand, economic interests sometimes seem to override these regulations. For example, the Taliban officially allowed a group of twelve Qatari sheiks to hunt rare birds in Nimruz province. It seems that in this case, the financial incentives (the sheiks paid several million USD, a fact that was officially acknowledged by the Taliban government, as described in a newspaper article titled “Contracts to Hunt Rare Birds Granted by Ministry”) trump the environmental concerns (source, other source).

This is a pity as many of the birds in Afghanistan are endangered and face extinction both from poaching and hunting as well as from environmental pollution.

From an ornithological standpoint, Afghanistan is certainly an interesting place as it is the place where the oriental and the Palearctic realms meet. Unfortunately, given the situation in Afghanistan, this is unlikely to lead to a stream of birdwatching tourists any time soon.

I will end this post with a few photos of bird species I saw in Afghanistan – though I have to admit that the photos were taken elsewhere as I did not take proper equipment on my trip.

Seen at Shahidan:

Plumbeous Water Redstart