Country: Afghanistan

Group: Hazara

Date Finalized: 4/2/2020

Team: Rayna Castillo (lead), Kimberly Prete, Sophia Agne

Content Warning: violence, death, slavery, sexual violence, violence against women

Approximate Time Period: 1880-1998

The Hazara ethnic group of Afghanistan has a long history of targeted lethal violence, stemming both from their religious and ethnic identity (“Hazaras,” n.d.). Because the Hazara population identifies predominantly as Shi’a, they have faced constant persecution from the majority Sunni population (“Hazaras,” n.d.). There was a surge of violence during Abdul Rahman’s reign from 1880 to 1901 when they revolted against his expansionist ambitions. Rahman responded by ordering the “killing of all Shias in central Afghanistan,” resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Hazaras, the enslavement of their women and children, and the occupation of their land (Hucal, 2016; “Hazaras,” n.d.). The Hazaras continued to face oppression through unwarranted taxes, targeted assaults, and massacres (“Hazaras,” n.d.). By 1893, an estimated 60 percent of the Hazara population had been killed. Attacks continued as “…Hazaras were made to conceal their identities to obtain state identification,” and, “…some Sunni religious teachers preached that the killing of Hazaras was a key to paradise” (“Hazaras,” n.d.).  After Rahman’s death in 1901, the Hazara gained some political relief in the following decades but were targeted again beginning in the 1970s by new rulers taking office, as well as by the subsequent Soviet occupation (Saikal, 2012). As recently as 1998 the Taliban carried out attacks that killed at least 2,000 Hazara individuals (HRW, 1998). Given the amount of highly reputable sources that support the above events, the data quality for the coding of targeted lethal violence for the Hazaras is a 3/3.

Sources

  1. Hazaras. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2020, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/hazaras/
  2. Hucal, S. (2016, June 27). Afghanistan: Who are the Hazaras? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/06/afghanistan-hazaras-160623093601127.html
  3. Human Rights Watch. (1998). AFGHANISTAN: THE MASSACRE IN MAZAR-I SHARIF. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports98/afghan/.
  4. Saikal, A. (2012). Afghanistan: The Status of the Shi’ite Hazara Minority. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs., 32(1), 80-87.