Who are Hazaras in Afghanistan?
One of the Persian-Dari ethnic groups in Afghanistan is the Hazaras, with the Persian dialect of Hazaragi scattered in all parts of Afghanistan, and most of them live in Daykundi, Bamyan Ghazni, and other provinces of Afghanistan. But their primary places of residence are in the central highlands of Afghanistan, called Hazarajat; most of them are Shiites. But Sunni Hazaras live in provinces such as Baghlan, Badghis, Ghor, Kunduz, Faryab, Jawzjan, Panjshir, Badakhshan, and Parwan, and there are some Sunni and Ismaili Hazaras in Bamyan and Shabir district as well. As mentioned, the majority and not all of the Hazara people are “Twelver Imams.” According to one tradition, the Hazaras became Shia during the reign of Shah Abbas Safavid. Still, another view has been put forward by HF Schroman, who believes that Shiism was introduced to the Hazaras from India.
Hazaras are the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, and estimates indicate that between six and seven million Hazaras, or 20 to 30 percent of the population, live in Afghanistan. Most Hazaras are Shiites and are considered a religious minority in Afghanistan society. Nevertheless, there have always been biased domestic groups that concealed the actual Hazara population in Afghanistan from the national and international media and fed false and untrue statistics to national and international newspapers and media worldwide. In itself, there is clear discrimination against the Hazaras in Afghanistan. Even though this discrimination has been accepted by the global media, which claims to provide accurate and impartial information about human rights, this false, unrealistic, and unprofessional statistic is shamelessly republished daily, which is unfortunate.
The media, which claims to provide accurate information, states that the Hazara population is 9 to 15 percent based on unrealistic and false statistics given to them by the enemies of the Hazaras and humanity from inside Afghanistan. It is nothing more than a lie. Although official and accurate population statistics in Afghanistan have not been released, estimates indicate that the Hazara population is above 15 percent in Afghanistan. Therefore, we hope the national and international media will report this issue honestly and impartially.
Taliban and Hazaras Issues in Afghanistan
Taliban are the same students of Wahhabi extremist schools in northern Pakistan. They had called themselves the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan since the 1990s, when they occupied large parts of Afghanistan for several years. The Taliban is an ethnic-religious-military Islamist movement in Deobandi consisting of extremist Islamists in Afghanistan. Many governments and organizations have considered the Taliban a terrorist, on the denied list of all countries except Pakistan. This group consists of several sub-groups, all of which were able to capture Kabul in 1996 under the banner of Mullah Mohammad Omar and, for a time, were the base and refuge of the al-Qaeda takfirists group. It was al-Qaeda’s host that opened the Americans to Afghanistan in 2001.
It is estimated that the Taliban had 75,000 fighters in 2021. Since the first Taliban group entered Afghanistan from Pakistan, their Pashtunism and anti-Hazara views have become apparent. In 1993, fighting between the Mujahidin in the Afshar area west of Kabul turned into full-scale violence against the Hazaras. One year after Abdul Malik Pahlavan (who was not a Hazara) killed 3,000 Taliban prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997, the Taliban invaded Mazar-e-Sharif. They began massacring Hazaras on suspicion of Shiites’ closeness to Iranians. In his speeches at various mosques in the city, Mullah Niazi, the new governor of Mazar-e-Sharif, said the Hazaras are not considered Muslims and that the Hazaras must either become Muslims or be killed.
Discrimination Against Hazaras in the Republic Gov
Then, the Taliban government was overthrown by a US-led invasion of NATO forces. Still, when the last Taliban group was ousted in 2001, the Hazaras progressed in Afghanistan’s new government. During the Republic era, the Hazara regions had the highest turnout in the country’s best universities, and voter turnout in the Hazara regions was typically the highest country. At the same time, however, despite being accepted to higher levels of universities, the Hazaras could not attend high-ranking administrative and military levels. The government tried to prevent them from attending more universities and educational centers in Afghanistan quotas. However, many grounds against the Hazaras’ progress were created simultaneously by circles called Republicans.
On the other hand, the killing of Hazaras did not stop in recent years but continued. Most suicide attacks occurred in Hazara schools, mosques, and educational and sports centers. Therefore, Both the Taliban and ISIS were involved in the attacks and claimed responsibility. Attacks on villages in the Khas Uruzgan district in November 2018 were among those in which 70 Hazaras were killed in a terrorist attack. The responsibility for these other operations against the Hazaras remains unclear, and why? However, so far, no official or unofficial authorities in any ethnic government in Afghanistan have had accurate and transparent accountability for the life of Hazara.
For the past twenty years, the Taliban have sought to demonstrate their declarative policies of fighting the foreign enemy and the government and have refrained from waging ethnic warfare. In practice, however, the group’s policies led to ethnic confrontations. In 2018, after the government declared a ceasefire with the Taliban, the Taliban left the government and declared war directly against the Hazaras. This year, unlike all eighteen years earlier, the Taliban did not speak out against the government and foreign troops; Rather, they spoke directly of confronting the Hazaras in Afghanistan.
At that time, the actions of the governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai were no less than those of the Taliban. Hamid Karzai secretly, but Ashraf Ghani more openly pursued ethnocentric policies against the Hazaras in Afghanistan. In this way, it can be said that the conditions for the Hazaras in Afghanistan have improved over the past twenty years, but they have not achieved equality and justice as other ethnic groups.
On the other hand, Hazaras living in the southern provinces of Afghanistan continued to face unofficial discrimination by the Pashtuns. In recent years, Hazaras in Afghanistan have been exposed to terrorist attacks by the Taliban and other takfirist groups. Hazaras in Pakistan’s Balochistan have also been attacked by militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and ISIS. In recent years, efforts to improve the security situation of the Hazaras in the city of Quetta in Balochistan have often been successful. For example, wall-building and checkpoints made suicide attacks against Hazaras difficult. Although this made life more difficult for locals, it improved their security in Balochistan, Pakistan.
Re-Emergence of the Taliban and the Killing of Hazaras
The arrival of the Taliban fired an insecure bullet at the security of the Hazaras in August 2021. When the Taliban came to power in the summer of this year with the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, it promised a general amnesty for all citizens of the country. But now, in Afghanistan, the realities on earth show something else. In Ghazni province, Taliban forces killed nine Hazara men when they took control of the city. In Bamyan, they also destroyed the Hazara leader Abdul Ali Marzari’s statue. Some local sources in Afghanistan have also reported that the Taliban go from house to house looking for Hazaras who played a role in the previous government. In Daykundi province, the Taliban killed 16 Hazaras members of the previous government after surrendering to the Taliban in 2021.
The Hazaras are historically the most limited ethnic group in Afghanistan, and as a result, they have experienced slight improvements, even with the creation of modern Afghanistan. Discrimination against this ethnic group has continued for centuries. It has been massacred, sold, humiliated, and insulted, especially by Pashtun ethnic governments, which has caused more concern about the re-emergence of the Taliban nowadays. Now that the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan, whispers of growing anti-Hazara in Afghanistan are being heard.
Some Hazaras have been killed, and some have been hidden for fear of death. Taliban are pessimistic about all who worked in the previous government, but these views have a more significant and negative meaning than those of the Hazaras and Shiites. Under the Taliban’s first government in the 1990s, the Taliban systematically killed tens of thousands of Hazara. Because of this background, the Hazaras are again worried about their future throughout Afghanistan as the Taliban re-emerged
Hazaras Serially Massacre from the Republic to the Emirate
During the Republic era, the killing and genocide of Hazaras in Afghanistan were summed up in a government press release. At no time have Afghanistan’s discriminatory governments given so much access to national, international, and human rights organizations to investigate the genocide and systematic killing of Hazaras in Afghanistan, but they have concealed it. During the rule of the Republic of Afghanistan, the grounds were prepared under the rule of Hamid Karzai. Still, it was implemented against specific and discriminated people during the reign of Ashraf Ghani. The Hazaras were targeted, oppressed, and killed in all parts of the country, but the authorities readily offered condolences and only promised a false investigation. Even during the Republic, Shiite Hazaras were attacked by suicide bombers near the Presidential Palace.
The security services did not take any serious measures to protect the Hazaras. They also falsely reported casualties to the domestic and foreign media, as the Taliban do today. Attacks such as the Dehmazang attack and Dasht-e Barchi in western Kabul, where terrorist attacks occurred in the Dasht-e Barchi area, a Hazara region, have killed thousands of young people, students, girls, boys, and women. Therefore, the same scenario is happening now during the Taliban era, and it has happened that only the Hazara people are targeted. Although the Taliban criticized the previous government for providing security, the Taliban themselves are now responsible for the lives and property of the Hazara people or are behind the attacks.
So far, there have been several targeted terrorist attacks against the Hazara people in Afghanistan involving the Taliban. On Tuesday, April 19, 2022, three incidents occurred in Dasht-e Barchi, west of Kabul, at the Mumtaz Educational Center and Abdul Rahim Shahid High School, where more than 25 Hazara students were killed and many more were injured.
However, the Taliban did not provide the exact number of casualties of suicide attacks. They even prevented news coverage of the incident. They arrested a journalist, an evident violation of the freedom of the media and the Hazara people in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Therefore, The Taliban did not allow the victims’ heirs to enter the hospitals following their children’s bodies. The survivors of the victims were insulted, humiliated, and even beaten by the Taliban.
Endnotes:
- https://www.aparat.com/v/37vJu/%E2%80%AB%D9%86%D8%B3%D9%84_%DA%A9%D8%B4%DB%8C_%D9%87%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87_%D9%87%D8%A7_%D8%A7%D8%B2%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%86_%D8%AA%D8%A7_%D8%B7%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%86
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58277463
- https://b2n.ir/amnesty.org