the Hazara Shi'a of Afghanistan

Discovering the Hazara Shi’a of Afghanistan
by Le Anne Clausen

In my travels, I heard repeatedly that the Hazara are traditionally considered to be the descendants of Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. I did observe that their features are indeed distinctly East Asian, as compared to the more Arab or Middle Eastern appearance of other ethnic groups within Afghanistan. They are typically concentrated in or come from Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh, and the aptly-named Hazarajat areas of the country. ‘Hazara’ is considered both an ethnic and religious distinction, as most Hazara are Shi’a. Not all Shi’a in Afghanistan are Hazara,[1] but they constitute the vast majority of the adherents. Shi’a make up 15% of the country’s religious population.

On the street, I observed Hazara working as gardeners, or as a sort of ‘hidden’ servants or even in roles similar to an ‘untouchable’ caste. Where I did not observe them was owning many shops or even waiting in restaurants. The currently popular novel by Khaled Husseini, The Kite Runner,[2] describes Hazara life similarly: the dominant class has generally considered them stupid, backwards, overly pious; and they are subject to mistreatment both individually and as a group.

This is certainly evidenced by the reports of human rights violations against the Hazara. Taliban leaders studied under the Sunni Deobandi seminaries in Pakistan “sought to ‘purify’ Islam by discarding supposedly un-Islamic accretions to the faith.”[3] Two fatwas were issued in Afghanistan’s history against the Hazara. The latter, issued by the Taliban reads,

The second fatwa, issued in 1998 by the Taliban Mullah Manon Niazi in Mazhar-i Sharif, blames all Hazara for the brutal deaths of Taliban soldiers the year before, when a failed attempt to capture the key northern city ended in the massacre of some 2,000 Taliban soldiers. "Hazaras! Where will you escape? If you jump in the air, we will still grasp your legs; if you sink into the earth, we will catch hold of your ears." The decree reads on: "Hazaras are not Muslim. You can kill them and it is not a sin."[4]

However, the earlier was issued in 1892 by the Emir Abdurrahman Khan, as:

“a detailed set of instructions to Afghan mullahs to drill home the message to all Afghans that Shi'a Muslims will not be tolerated. ‘With a view to bringing this stray flock to the true faith, I have ordered that [Shi'a] should be preached to and exhorted to give up their false religion. If they do not listen to the advice and preaching of the Sunnis, it will be absolutely necessary that they are put to death.’”[5]

Thus was the stage set for discrimination against the group prior to the rise of the Taliban, which Husseini also describes in the early chapters of his novel.

January 2001 saw the Taliban massacre of several hundred civilians at Yakaolang in central Afghanistan, after they took over new territories previously held by other warlords. The same report also cites forced expulsions and harassment of Hazara as Taliban forces conquered and occupied new areas.

Human Rights Watch states that the conflict between Hazara and Taliban is political and military as well as religious, and that religion is a significant, though not necessarily exclusive reason for repression. The organization also states that the Hazara have carried out human rights violations of their own.[6]

More recently, in January 2003, Hazara have had nearly 200 shops in the Lashkar Gah municipality confiscated and were denied the right to build a mosque there also. “While the Human Rights Commission and the UN had reached an agreement in February 2003with the Governor to compensate Hazara shopkeepers with land elsewhere in Lashkar Gah, the Governor had only partly honored this agreement by the end of period covered by this report.”[7]
In August 1998, Taliban forces carried out a massacre against the inhabitants of Mazar-i-Sharif, primarily populated by Hazara Shi’a, killing thousands of civilians and prisoners. The massacre was considered revenge for a 1997 massacre of Taliban forces.[8] In September 1998, 500 more Hazara were killed at Bamiyan; Hazaras regained control of the city in April 1999 after a long guerrilla campaign. However, the Taliban recaptured Bamiyan in May 1999 and killed more Shi’a residents[9]

I found several dozen websites memorializing these events, set up by individual Hazara, particularly young people. Hazara.org included an open posting page which expressed anger at being treated worse than the many other ethnic groups in Afghanistan, as well as calls for peace and unity in the country. Hazara.net is “dedicated to the souls of hundreds of thousands of Hazara men, women, and children who have lost their lives to religious persection during the 19th through 21st centuries in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere,” and contains a variety of human rights advocacy and cultural information. The ‘Nation of Hazara’ site emphasizes the community’s Shi’a religious heritage.[10] Otherwise, information is somewhat difficult to find, including only a handful of mostly out-of-print books.


So where does this leave me? I went to Afghanistan looking for the Shi’a, and I encountered this group of people with a long and difficult history. Still, I cannot speak on Afghanistan without doing justice to them, just as I find I cannot speak on Islam and Muslims without doing justice to the Shi’a tradition and people’s history of persecution. The history of a people’s suffering cannot whitewash their own violent actions, although proportion of violence done must be communicated authentically. I think the next step for me academically is to explore further the growth of Shi’ism beyond the Arab/Middle Eastern context into other nations and ethnicities.



[1]Afghanistan: International Religious Freedom Report, U.S. State Dept. Bureau Of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35513.htm Accessed 9/17/05
[2]Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead Trade, 2004.
[3] “Status of Religious Freedom in Afghanistan,” article in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_religious_freedom_in_Afghanistan. Accessed 9/17/05

[4] “The Issue at Hand,” interview by Nyier Abdou, Al-Ahram Weekly, November 17, 2001. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/561/7war2.htm
[5] ibid.
[6] “Massacres of Hazara in Afghanistan,” produced by Human Rights Watch, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/afghanistan/afghan101-02.htm. Accessed 9/17/05.
[7] See ft. 1, “Afghanistan: International Religious Freedom Report,” 2004.
[8] ibid.
[9] “Abuses of Religious Freedom,” article in http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Discrimination_against_non-Muslims_in_Afghanistan, accessed September 17, 2005
[10] http://members.tripod.com/MillateHazara/