Meet Khanzir, the only pig in Afghanistan - and perhaps the loneliest swine in the world

Khanzir likes to lie in the sun. He spends long days sprawled across the grass, sometimes trotting over to greet the people passing by and admiring him. He almost seems to know he is popular, that visitors come from far and wide to catch a glimpse of him.

Khanzir’s celebrity is derived from the fact that he is the only pig in all of Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, as in most Islamic nations, eating pork is considered haram. In fact, one interpretation of that belief forbids even touching the animal. As a result, no pigs are reared or farmed in the country. Besides, the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan is no place for a domestic pig.

“By and large, most Afghans have never seen a pig in their life,” said Aziz Gul Saqib, director of the Kabul Zoo, where 14-year-old Khanzir lives in a grassy enclosure with a small pond and a concrete shelter for days when the pig prefers to keep to himself.

But Khanzir, whose name simply means “pig” in Pashto, one of the national languages of Afghanistan, wasn’t always the lonely pig in a derelict zoo in a conflict zone. He was given as a piglet to the zoo by China in 2002, along with a female pig and a pair of brown bears, Saqib said. News reports from the time said the delivery also included two lions, two deer and a wolf.

Khanzir and his mate, both pink and sturdy, had a litter of piglets a few years later. But the little porcine family was torn apart by tragedy in 2006.

“Our zoo caretakers were fairly new then and not very well-trained at the time,” explains Saqib. “One day, a caretaker accidentally left the door to the brown bear’s cage open, and one of the bears got into the pigs’ enclosure that was close by,” he said.