Persecution of Hazaras
The Hazaras have been the subject of ethnic and religious persecution in Afghanistan for hundreds of years. In the 1890s, the Hazara genocide was the massacre, enslavement and forced displacement century of sixty percent of Hazaras. In the 20th and 21st centuries, they have also been the victims of massacres committed by the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Hazaras have been systemically killed and discriminated against socially, economically, and culturally with specific intent, argued by some to constitute genocide. The Hazaras primarily come from the central regions of Afghanistan, known as Hazarajat. Significant communities of Hazara people also live in Quetta, Pakistan and in Mashad, Iran, as part of the Hazara and Afghan diasporas.
File:Map to Illustrate the Military Geography of Afghanistan Part IV Kabul Province.png|thumb|Map of Kabul Province and its surroundings showing the boundaries of the different Hazara tribes in 1893. Between 1888 and 1893, about 60% of the Hazaras were massacred or had their land seized by the Pashtuns., Uruzgan Province and many areas that were inhabited by Hazaras until 1893 are mostly inhabited by Pashtuns.
During the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman, millions of Hazaras were massacred, expelled, and displaced. Half the population of Hazarajat was killed or fled to neighboring regions of Balochistan in British India and Khorasan in Iran. This led to Pashtuns and other ethnic groups occupying parts of Hazarajat.
Conditions significantly improved for the Hazaras in Afghanistan during the Republic era, and Hazaras were represented in national government. However, Hazaras still faced discrimination throughout the country and under government policies, including access to infrastructure. Those who lived in the southern provinces of Afghanistan continued to face prejudice at the hands of Pashtuns without repercussion.
Since 2021, the Hazaras have suffered from widespread ethnic discrimination, religious persecution, and organized attacks by terrorist groups. Under the Taliban, Hazaras face deliberate economic restrictions to weaken and create economic backwardness of Hazara regions. Thousands of Hazaras have been forcibly seized from their ancestral lands and homes and undergo the occupation of pastures by Pashtun nomads and Taliban supporters. The seizure of agricultural fields has forced Hazara farmers to migrate or flee from Afghanistan. Additionally, Hazara girls and women endure harassment and arbitrary arrest, kidnapping, and rape and torture in prison. Numerous cases of human rights violations against Hazaras have caused many Hazaras to be displaced and gradually forced to flee Afghanistan.
The 33-member Taliban-led government of Afghanistan currently excludes any Hazara representation. Despite constituting up to 19% of Afghanistan's population, Hazaras have not been appointed for any ministries, provincial administrations, security commands, or army corps. The Taliban also revoked the Shia Personal Status Law, resulting in the disenfranchisement of the Hazara and Shia community within the country. Other restrictions and sanctions on Hazara include ban on the teaching of Shia Jafari doctrine in higher education, removal of Ashura as a national holiday, and restrictions on Muharram.
Afghanistan
Hazaras are historically the most restrained ethnic group in the state and as a result, they have only experienced slight improvements in their circumstances even with the setup of modern Afghanistan. The discrimination against this ethnic group has continued for centuries, and it has been instigated against them by Pashtuns and other ethnic groups. Sayed Askar Mousavi, estimates that more than half of the entire population of Hazarajat was driven out of its villages, including many who were massacred. "It is difficult to verify this estimate, but the memory of the conquest of the Hazarajat by Abdur Rahman certainly remains vivid among the Hazaras themselves, and it has heavily influenced their relationship with the Afghan state throughout the 20th century. The British from neighboring British India, who were heavily involved in Afghanistan, did not document such a large figure".Others claim that Hazaras began to leave their homeland of Hazarajat in search of employment due to injustice and poverty, mostly during the 20th century. Most of these Hazaras immigrated to neighboring Balochistan, where they were provided permanent settlement by the British colonial government. Others settled in and around Mashad, Iran.
The Hazaras of Afghanistan faced severe political, social and economic tyranny and denial of basic civil rights. In 1933, Abdul Khaliq, a Hazara student assassinated Afghan king Muhammad Nadir Shah.
Persecution and marginalization
Notably, after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Abdur Rahman conducted a campaign of repression in Hazarajat, but it was met with fierce opposition by Hazara tribal leaders. The first uprising was conducted in correlation with Abdur Rahman's cousin, Mohammad Eshaq, who sought to overthrow the Amir. This revolt of Hazara nationalists and anti-Amir partisans was brief because Abdur Rahman used sectarian strife to divide the Hazara Shias and the Sunni partisans, thus allowing him to easily defeat his foes.The defeat of the Hazaras in their first revolt allowed Abdur Rahman to impose taxes on Hazarajat for the first time, and they severely impeded the autonomy of Hazarajat, because numerous Pashtun soldiers and government officials were garrisoned in Hazarajat to ensure its compliance with the Pashtun-run state. Subsequently, the Pashtuns garrisoned in Hazarajat, treated the local Hazaras as inferiors, and often committed arbitrary acts of cruelty and brutality against them. This caused great unrest and a deepening hatred between the Hazaras and their Pashtun rulers, causing the Hazaras to reach their tipping point in 1892.
The outrage that followed allowed the Hazaras to unite once again to overthrow most of the local Pashtun garrisons in Hazarajat. This newfound zealous fever fermented fierce resistance against Abdur Rahman and his forces. Witnessing the rising tide, Abdur Rahman felt he had no choice but to wage a jihad against the Shia Hazaras, and under this casus belli Abdur Rahman was able to muster around 150,000 troops. The resulting conflict was brutal and led to a great loss of life on both sides. The Hazaras fought with vigor but the attrition they faced due to lack of rations led to their demise at the uprising's epicenter of Oruzgan.
Improvements and recognition
Despite the "democratic" 1964 constitution that contained universal suffrage, political and social rights for minorities were still not guaranteed. That decade the first Hazara minister was appointed by the King. Under the first communist Khalq government, Hazaras have persecuted again, a particular episode being the Chindawol uprising in 1979 when hundreds of Hazaras went missing. Their persecution was not kept secret - for instance, Abdullah Amin, brother of Hafizullah Amin, expressed anti-Hazara comments during a public speech that year. Following the Soviet Union's intervention and creation of the Parcham government under Babrak Karmal, Hazara rights improved, and the party's constitution declared all races and ethnicities in Afghanistan as being equal. During the 1980s, Hazaras became more prominent in the army and the ruling communist party, and one Hazara politician, Sultan Ali Keshtmand, would serve as prime minister for most of the decade. The Hazaras were split over the Soviet–Afghan War – most of the urban population supported and fought for the communist regime in Kabul, where they were now officially equal, but most of the rural Hazara population rejected the reforms and resisted.Post-communist era
The Hazara Hezb-e Wahdat militia and party joined the new mujahideen government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, and some members held government posts. However they would soon be discriminated against and would be excluded from the administration. At the same time, violent ethnic conflict broke out between Hezb-e Wahdat and the Saudi-backed Wahhabi Ittihad-i Islami militia led by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. The Hazara claim the Taliban executed 15,000 of their people in their campaign through northern and central Afghanistan.Afshar
In February 1993, a two-day military operation was conducted by the Islamic State of Afghanistan government and its allied Ittihad-i Islami militia. The military operation was conducted to seize control of the Afshar district in west Kabul where the Shia Hezb-e Wahdat militia was based and from where it was shelling civilian areas in northern Kabul. The operation also intended to capture Wahdat leader Abdul Ali Mazari. The Afshar district, situated on the slopes of Mount Afshar west of Kabul, is densely populated. The area is predominantly inhabited by Shia Hazaras. The Afshar military operation escalated into what became known as the Afshar massacre when the Saudi-backed Wahhabi militia of Ittihad-e-Islami went on a rampage through Afshar, killing, raping, looting, and burning houses. Two out of nine Islamic State sub-commanders, Anwar Dangar and Mullah Izzat, were also reported as leading troops that carried out abuses. The Islamic State government in collaboration with the then enemy militia of Hezb-e Wahdat as well as in cooperation with Afshar civilians established a commission to investigate the crimes that had taken place in Afshar. The commission found that around 70 people died during the street fighting and between 700 and 750 people, were abducted and never returned by Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's men. These abducted victims were most likely killed or died in captivity.Mazar-i-Sharif
Following the 1997 massacre of 3,000 Taliban prisoners by Abdul Malik Pahlawan in Mazar-i-Sharif thousands of Hazaras were massacred by other Taliban members in the same city in August 1998. The slaughter has been credited to a number of factors—ethnic difference, suspicion of Hazara loyalty to Shia Iran, anger at the loss of life suffered in an earlier unsuccessful Taliban takeover of Mazarwas—including takfir by the Taliban of the Hazaras. After the attack, Mullah Niazi, the commander of the attack and the new governor of Mazar, declared from several mosques in the city in separate speeches:Last year you rebelled against us and killed us. From all your homes you shot at us. Now we are here to deal with you.
Hazaras are not Muslim, they are Shia. They are kofr . The Hazaras killed our force here, and now we have to kill Hazaras.
If you do not show your loyalty, we will burn your houses, and we will kill you. You either accept to be Muslims or leave Afghanistan.
herever you go we will catch you. If you go up, we will pull you down by your feet; if you hide below, we will pull you up by your hair.
If anyone is hiding Hazaras in his house he too will be taken away. What Wahdat and the Hazaras did to the Talibs, we did worse...as many as they killed, we killed more.
At 10 a.m. on 8 August 1998, the Taliban entered the city and for the next two days drove their pickup trucks "up and down the narrow streets of Mazar-i-Sharif shooting to the left and right and killing everything that moved—shop owners, cart pullers, women and children shoppers and even goats and donkeys." More than 8,000 noncombatants were reportedly killed in Mazar-i-Sharif and later in Bamiyan. In addition, the Taliban were criticized for forbidding anyone from burying the corpses for the first six days while the remains rotted in the summer heat and were eaten by dogs. During these killings 2,000 to 5,000, or perhaps up to 20,000 Hazara were systematically executed across the city. The Taliban went door to door of Hazara households searching for combat age males, shooting them and slitting their throats right in front of their families. Hazaras were shoved into trailers where they suffocated to death or they died of heat strokes, and later, their bodies were dumped into piles in the middle of the desert. The Taliban randomly shot anti-aircraft weapons at civilians into the middle of the city; causing drivers to swerve out of control and run people over. Human rights organizations reported that the dead were lying on the streets for weeks before the Taliban allowed their burial due to stench and fear of epidemics. Niamatullah Ibrahimi
described the killings as "an act of genocide at full ferocity."
Members of Pakistan's ISI claimed that the killings were only committed after trials; however, the Taliban had Pakistani fighters alongside them during their siege of the city.