As a result, the Hazara community was brutally oppressed by the Taliban before the hard-line regime was toppled by the U. Hazaras are also frequently targeted by the Islamic State terrorist group, which views them as heretics, and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, Amnesty International said in a report that 13 members of the Hazara community, including a teenage girl, were killed by the group.
Nine were believed to be government soldiers who had surrendered, the report said. Karimi denied the Taliban were behind the killings, but said they would investigate the claims. Mushtaq Yusufzai is a journalist based in Peshawar, Pakistan. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Politics Covid U. In August of the same year, Taliban fighters captured Mazar-e Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan, going on a rampage targeting Tajiks, Uzbeks and particularly, Hazaras.
Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 2, people of different ethnic communities, including Hazaras, were killed and according to estimates by Hazara groups, the death toll may be as high as 15, The US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which toppled the Taliban regime, brought new hopes for the Hazara people. Although discrimination in the country continued, the community was able to participate in public life much more freely.
These gains in education and social standing have encouraged the community to mobilise and demand an end to discrimination and a greater political space.
Yet in the following years, the political space they were given in the country did not reflect the proportion of the population they constituted. After , the Hazaras also continued to suffer targeted violence at the hands of the Taliban and other armed groups. Since , the emergence of the even more extreme Islamic State Khorasan Province ISKP unleashed an even deadlier wave of attacks on the Hazara population, with suicide bombers targeting schools, mosques and even hospitals in Hazara neighbourhoods.
The return of the Taliban to power in Kabul has meant not only a rollback of the limited social gains the Hazaras had achieved, but also new atrocities against the community.
In August, Amnesty International reported that at least nine Hazara men were massacred by the Taliban when its fighters took over Ghazni province in July. Then earlier this month, the organisation released evidence of another massacre in which 13 Hazaras, including a year-old girl, were killed in late August in Daykundi province.
Taliban fighters forced over 4, Hazaras from their homes, claiming they had no ownership over their land, leaving them stranded without food or shelter as harsh winter approaches. In Mazar-e-Sharif, a local Taliban court decided to expel some 2, families, again based on false claims that they do not own their homes. By now there is a clear pattern of Taliban atrocities being committed across Afghanistan, which could mean that the Hazaras may be facing imminent ethnic cleansing.
The Taliban leadership may have moderated its rhetoric to please the international community, claiming that it will protect all ethnic groups, but it has done nothing to stem the growing number of crimes being committed by its fighters. What is more, the group has also clearly declared that it will only accept Hanafi jurisprudence, which would effectively preclude any accommodation of the Shia Islamic law and values followed by Hazaras.
Expectedly, no Hazara representative was included in the Taliban government announced in September. It is also not surprising that, despite the insistence by the Taliban that it can provide security and peace in Afghanistan, ISKP has continued its deadly attacks against the Hazaras.
We have proved that we can contribute and work hard in the past 20 years," he said. Although he now lives as an illegal refugee in Thailand and cannot work or study, he feels it is a better fate than the prospects he had in his home country. Sayed has been desperately trying to evacuate his three young siblings who are still in Afghanistan and living without a guardian ever since their father passed away in They are all alone.
Fleeing will be dangerous, but staying in the village is even more so. In the last few weeks, harrowing images have emerged of Afghan citizens desperately scrambling to flee the country at Kabul airport.
One video circulated on social media showed a Hazara man with blood running down his face, saying he had been attacked while trying to get to Kabul airport. Saleem Javed told Insider he was aware of many instances of the Taliban "ethnic profiling" Hazaras and preventing them from entering the airport.
Many Hazaras who worked for the previous government and international organizations have also burned their documents out of fear of reprisal from the Taliban, Javed said. Although the Taliban have already carried out some targeting killings of Hazara people and continue to harass and intimidate them, they have so far refrained from committing massacres on the scale they once did.
Javed said another fear is that an emboldened ISIS or al-Qaeda might attack the minority group with impunity. They're trying to eliminate all proof of us. It's not safe for me to talk.
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