A History of Persecution of the Pakistani Hazara
On 12th April 2019, 20 people were killed in a bomb blast that took place in a vegetable market in Hazarganji in the city of Quetta. Nine out of the twenty were members of the local ethnic Hazara community, one was a Frontier Corps assigned to the security of the Hazara people while the rest were other civilians.¹ The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeT) — two notorious Islamist terrorist organizations — soon took responsibility for the incident, confirming suspicions that the attack was indeed carried out specifically as an assault on the Hazara people.²
This is just one of a series of attacks made by terrorists against the Quetta Hazara over the past twenty years. The fearful community has now ended up being ghettoized within the same city it once called home.³ Many individuals unaccustomed to the socio-political situation of Pakistan may ponder the question of who exactly the people of Hazara are, how they came to live in Pakistan and why they are being ruthlessly targeted in such a way. The answer is best explained through historical context.
Most historians agree that the Hazara people are the descendants of the Mongols and Central Asian Turks. In 1221, under the leadership of Genghis Khan, the Mongols laid siege to the town of Bamyan in the Hazarajat region of Afghanistan. It is a common belief amongst the Hazaras themselves that after all the local Afghans were eliminated, Genghis Khan had the region repopulated with his own Mongol troops and their slave women. The term “Hazara” was coined as a reference to the Mongol military unit of “yak hazar” [Persian: one thousand] troops. The genetic analysis of samples of Hazara DNA has also corroborated the claim of their Mongolian and Turkic ancestry.
The first official mention of the “Hazara” people was made by the Mughal Emperor Babur in the early 16th century and then later by court historians of the Safavid period. Reports indicate that it was under the Shia influence of the Iranian Safavid dynasty that by the dawn of the 17th century the Hazaras came into the folds of Shia Islam — a decision that would have an immense impact on their community in the years to come.
During the British expansion, the Hazara were mainly labourers in the coal industry. They rose to prominence in the late 19th century when Abdur Rahman Khan (the new British-appointed Emir of Afghanistan) wanted to take control of the regions of Hazarajat and Kafiristan after the Treaty of Gandomak in 1879. From 1888–1893, the Emir faced tremendous uprisings from the people of Hazara. He did, however, eventually succeed and in the aftermath of the rebellion went on to commit great atrocities against the revolting groups. It is estimated that nearly 60% of all Hazaras were either massacred or forced to flee to the neighbouring regions of Iran and the Indian subcontinent. The communities that took shelter in India are the direct ancestors of the 600,000 or so Hazaras currently residing in Pakistan, situated mainly in the Quetta suburbs of Hazara Town and Marriabad.
The oppression of the Hazara community in Pakistan is primarily due to their Shia Muslim faith. This coupled with their status as a low-to-middle income community in the long-impoverished province of Balochistan has made them an easy target. Shia and Sunni are the two major branches of Islamic thinking with the former putting greater emphasis on Caliph Ali and the Imams and the latter focusing solely on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. The rise in sectarian conflict between the two groups can be attributed to the Iran-Iraq and the Soviet-Afghan wars of the 1980s. As a result of these, the Islamic Revolution in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamization programme in Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq took place. This ultimately led to the radicalization of both Shia and Sunni sects in the region as each sought to throttle the power and religious influence of the other.
Militant organizations such as the Shia Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqh-e-Jafaria (TNFJ) and the Sunni Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) were established around 1985, with the latter having been formed with the support of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), a Pakistani Sunni Muslim political party. The SSP has been held responsible for the assassinations of several high-profile Iranian diplomats, including that of Iranian Consul-General Agha Sadiq Ganji in 1990 which was supposedly carried out as revenge for the murder of SSP founder Haq Nawaz Jhangvi which took place that very year.
The flames of Hazara persecution in Afghanistan were rekindled with the takeover of the country in 1996 by the Taliban, a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist political and military organization. In September 1996, the Taliban seized the Afghan capital of Kabul and committed heinous war-crimes against the rebelling tribes who supported Ahmad Shah Massoud, a staunch anti-Taliban Afghan military commander. The Taliban notoriously kidnapped and raped young women from the Hazara tribes. In August 1998, the Taliban regained control of Mazar-i-Sharif and massacred some 2000 civilians, most of which were Hazara.⁴ Just after the city’s occupation, the newly installed Taliban Governor of Mazar-i-Sharif began giving out hate speeches against the Hazaras, calling them kafir (infidels) for their Shia faith and threatening to kill them all if they didn’t convert to Sunni Islam or leave Afghanistan altogether. These sudden escalations caused another Hazara diaspora as many, fearing for their lives, chose to flee to neighbouring Iran and Balochistan.
The defeat of the Taliban government in 2001 with the joint efforts of the United States, Russia, NATO and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan did largely bring an end to the suffering of the remaining Hazara in the country. However, due to the strong support of the Taliban by the Pakistani government, the Taliban soon moved their base of operations to Quetta where most of the Hazara immigrants in Pakistan were located. This has now lead to the present-day plight of the Hazaras residing in Balochistan.
In February 2018, the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR) Pakistan released a report titled “Understanding the Agonies of the Ethnic Hazaras” and listed all the major attacks carried out on the Hazara community of Balochistan from 1999 to 2017, in which a total of more than 2000 Hazaras have been killed, and urged the Pakistani government to take immediate action. According to the Home Department of Balochistan, from 2012 to 2017 alone, 509 members of the Hazara community have been killed and 627 injured in incidents such as bomb blasts, suicide attacks and target killings. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an offshoot of the SSP that fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan, has taken personal responsibility for the majority of the attacks on the Hazara community in Pakistan.⁵
The most prominent of attacks orchestrated against the Pakistani Hazaras have been as follows:
· On 4th July 2003, 3 armed gunmen opened fire on a Hazara Imambargah (mosque) killing 53 people and leaving 57 injured.
· On 3rd September 2010, suicide bombing and open firing lead to the death of 56 and the injury of 160 protestors of the Imamia Student Federation.
· On 6th May 2011, a shooting by 10 armed men on an open field park in Hazara Town left 8 dead and 15 wounded. Afterwards, LeT issued an open threat letter claiming that a fatwa (Islamic ordinance) had declared Shia Hazaras as unclean infidels and worthy of being killed.
· On 20th September 2011, a bus carrying Shia pilgrims from Quetta to Taftan, Iran, was halted at Mastung District and gunned down killing 26 and injuring 6 Hazara people.
· On 10th January 2013, the United Baloch Army and LeT together bombed Alamdar Road, killing 96 and injuring 150 mainly Hazara civilians.
· On 17th February 2013, a remote-control bomb was detonated in a vegetable market killing 84 and injuring 160 people, mostly Hazara.
· On 2nd January 2014, a Shia pilgrim bus returning to Quetta was attacked, leaving 30 dead and 21 injured.
· On 9th June 2014, Shia (mostly Pakistani Hazara) pilgrims in Taftan were attacked in their hotel killing 30 of them.
As of 2013, attempts have been made by the Pakistani government to ensure the security of the Hazara community in Quetta. Several hundred Frontier Corps personnel have been dispatched to escort the citizens of Hazara Town and Marriabad at all times. Permanent check posts have been installed at all the major entry and exit points of Hazara Town and Marriabad.⁶ However, the Hazara people still fear the government is not doing enough to protect them because they are still being targeted and persecution persists, as narrates the NCHR report. They also claim that the authorities are not transparent about responses to their complaints and First Information Reports (FIRs) and are discriminatory against them with their unnecessary security checks of the Hazara people instead of actual suspects.
Nawaz Sharif — Prime Minister of Pakistan from 2013–2017 — had more or less slept on the suffering of the people of Balochistan. His party’s inability to implement the National Action Plan (an active military crackdown on terrorism) well until 2015, just after the devastating massacre of 132 schoolchildren of APS Peshawar at the hands of the Taliban in December 2014, justifies this critique.⁷
The current Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan seems to be double-minded in his efforts to pacify the Hazara community and has resorted to useless condemnations and unsubstantial promises much like his predecessors. After the Hazarganji attack, Imran Khan and his political party posted Tweets renouncing “terrorist” elements and vowing to stand with the Hazara people.
Funnily enough, no mention of sectarianism — the real reason for the ongoing massacre in Quetta — was made. It also took a whole public outcry across social media for Imran Khan to eventually plan a visit to Quetta a good 10 days after the incident occurred.⁸
Furthermore, before the April attack, Khan was engaged in US-backed peace talks with the Taliban and at one point suggested the establishment of an interim government to negotiate with the Taliban, much to the Afghan government’s disapproval.⁹ These are the same Taliban that massacred hundreds of Hazaras back in Afghanistan just a few years ago (though Khan would most likely jump on the “Good Taliban in Afghanistan” and “Bad Taliban in Pakistan” rhetoric enforced by previous Pakistani leaders). On one hand, Khan is trying to comfort his own country’s dying citizens and on the other clearly sympathising with their enemies for strategic gain. Not surprisingly, the minority ultimately suffers from the state’s blatant hypocrisy.
But what should actually be done? How can Pakistan put a stop to the unending torture of its Hazara citizens? Well, first and foremost, the government of Pakistan needs to acknowledge the problem for what it is: a sectarian conflict between the Shia and Sunni factions of Pakistan. No matter how taboo the topic appears to the proud Pakistani nation, it needs to be addressed and publicised outright.
Sunni militants active in Pakistan are murdering helpless Shia Hazaras.
The message couldn’t be clearer. The current international political atmosphere should be enough of a testament for the Pakistani population to realize that there is a dire need for us all to unite under the single banner of nationhood rather than beneath multiple independent slogans of conflict.
From here we need to move forwards.
Rather than trying to establish a government for an internationally banned terrorist organisation, we need to fully implement the 2015 National Action Plan and drive out the Sunni fundamentalist ideology altogether.
While doing so, Pakistan (and its silently destructive ally the US) needs to publicly admit to its mistake of supporting the Taliban (whether it was to counter India or not), under the leadership of General Babar, Pervez Musharraf and the ISI, after the fall of the Afghan government in 1992.¹⁰ ¹¹ This is the only viable strategy that can help mend the tattered relations between Pakistan and its immediate geographic and cultural neighbour Afghanistan.
Instead of simply making lofty promises of constructing thousands of houses in Balochistan as Imran Khan did on his visit to Quetta,¹² we need to start bringing more and more people of Balochistan into proactive roles within the national government. This would not only aid the Hazara cause but would also help combat the Balochistan insurgency rife within the state which has been completely indifferent to the Hazara cause.¹³
We need to specifically reserve seats in the Balochistan Provincial Assembly for the Hazara community. We need to work on the education of the people of Quetta. Realistically speaking, it’s the only way the people of Quetta can gain the knowledge and the political power necessary to break themselves free from persecution at the hands of the extremists living amongst them.
By setting education and job quotas in public institutions for members of the Hazara community we can ensure that they rise above their current economic status as vegetable vendors and procure the influence essential for securing their own future and that of their kin.
To these ends, it is essential that our national media mainstream the issues and security concerns of the Hazara people and urge the public to contribute as much as it can. The recent Supreme Court encouraged crowdfunding of dams has shown how active the Pakistani public can become when the opportunity arises.¹⁴
There is so much to be done yet our government remains as complacent to the issues of minorities as it has always been. One can only rally and petition and hope for the apathetic leaders of our country to critically assess their priorities so that in some foreseeable future we might just be able to breathe in a Pakistan that is slightly less bloody.
For a link to an ongoing petition started by “Muslims for Peace”, click here.
