Who owns the land after regime collapse? Shifting land claims and tenure governance in post-2021 Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, land ownership has long shifted with political power. Successive regime changes have reshaped who is recognised as an owner, who can occupy property, and how territorial resources are redistributed. The Taliban’s return in 2021 did not produce formal land reform, but it reopened a familiar pattern in which political transition unsettles property relations and enables new forms of control. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Afghan landowners now living in exile, this article examines how ownership moves between informal occupation and formal recognition. Houses, plots, and commercial spaces often remain legally tied to former owners while authority is renegotiated on the ground. In some cases, occupation becomes institutionalised through administrative approval, new documentation, or policy measures that regularise access for politically aligned actors. Property change therefore unfolds less as a single act of confiscation than as a layered process through which possession, mediation, and emerging governance practices redefine ownership. The analysis shows how struggles over land operate as a mechanism for reassembling political order. Ownership becomes increasingly difficult to exercise across distance, producing conditions in which property may persist on paper or be reassigned through governmental decree, while recognition and effective control shift in practice. By foregrounding absent owners and unsettled claims, the article contributes to land use policy debates on restitution, return, and post-conflict land administration, with implications for other fragile political environments.