Kabul, Jan 19 (IANS): A dispute over the ownership of a jungle in eastern Afghanistan's Kapisa province killed one and injured 21 others on Saturday, provincial police spokesman Abdul Fatah Faiz said Sunday.

The clash erupted over the ownership of a jungle between residents of two villages in Alasai district on Saturday afternoon.

As a result, one villager was killed and 21 others sustained injuries, Xinhua news agency reported.

The situation came under control after police reached the area and took 35 villagers into custody.

An investigation was underway to identify those responsible.

Eastern Afghanistan’s province of Nuristan is a green oasis in a country largely in the grip of desertification. The area is replete with tree-covered mountains and clear rivers that wind through lush, narrow valleys. Along with the neighboring province of Kunar, Nuristan is home to some of the region’s densest, oldest and most ecologically diverse forests.

Yet during the past few decades, relentless and mostly illegal logging has reduced many of these rich ecosystems to shadows of their former selves. And what’s left remains under serious threat, with residents of these valleys growing increasingly desperate for income amid dire economic circumstances.

As erosion, flooding and forest fires increase across eastern Afghanistan at a frightening pace, many communities now realize that their homes, villages and farmlands may be unable to bear the ecological consequences of deforestation. Loggers themselves—many of them poor labourers with no alternative income—face an increasingly difficult choice: either abandon their only reliable way of feeding their families or continue destroying their own environment, endangering their communities and defying the notoriously brutal Taliban government’s ban on logging.

It’s a complex web of competing needs, and the balance is starting to falter.