September 25 Hazara Genocide Remembrance Day

A report dated 10/19/1983 records that
Amir Abdul Rahman Khan sold 10,000
captive Hazaras as slaves.

September 25 of each year marks the remembrance of the Hazara genocide. Social media platforms such as X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook are flooded with commemorative messages from Hazara users using #StopHazaraGenocide. Today marks September 25, 1982, when the blood thirsty Amir Abdul Rahman Khan issued a decree in which he announced the Hazaras as infidels to be annihilated entirely. In his book, Siraj-al Tawarikh, Faiz Muhammad Katib, the official historian of the court of Kabul and a Hazara himself, records that more than 60 percent of the Hazaras were killed, enslaved, and displaced. According to Katib, more than 400,000 Hazara households (khanwar) were killed, enslaved, and displaced. If we consider an average household of 6 people, 2.4 million Hazaras had vanished, and their lands were usurped by Pashtuns, as Amir called the bounty of war. 

September 25 marks a day of remembrance for Hazaras as a collective and distinct cultural and ethnic group, recognizing that the past is not a static fact but an active process that shapes the lives of Hazaras today and in the future. The Hazaras have been experiencing genocide since then, and it continues. Have a look at this extensive report by the New Line Institute on September 1, 2025, about the ongoing genocide of the Hazaras under the de facto regime of the Taliban.

Through this calendrical ritual, the Hazaras are attempting to understand their past, which is so deeply ingrained that it will continue to impact their future. Transforming a historical event into an annual recurring practice will reinforce the Hazara group's solidarity, and it represents a crucial first step in understanding what happened in the 1890s and its subsequent consequences. 

September 25 Hazara genocide remembrance is happening almost entirely online. Digital content such as writing stories, creating art, and music videos, and organizing spaces where the Hazara genocide is being discussed are all marked under the hashtag #StopHazaraGenocide, which has so far garnered more than 50 million tweets. This means that the traditional spaces of remembrance (which used to be in masjid and minbar) are moved to a new space. There is now a diasporic public sphere in which Hazaras worldwide participate, engage, and strengthen their transnational Hazara identity. This synchronized effort, initiated in the aftermath of the Enlightenment Movement, will continue to strengthen the global community of Hazaras. 

How to explain the meaning of "citizen" to a 6th grader?

My nephew Amir is ten years old and in the sixth grade. Yesterday, during a WhatsApp call, he asked me what the meaning of "citizen" is. What does it mean to be a good citizen?

I said it depends on the angle from which you look at the meaning of "citizen." Before we become citizens, we are human beings. Then, when governments want to subjugate people, they impose a series of submissive and controlling systems on people to make them obedient and docile. This means that not only do they have to pay their taxes on time, but if the government wants to resort to violence against its own citizens or wage war against another nation, it asks them to fight for the government. In short, they become a handy tool for the government because they serve the government's purpose. This is the meaning of a good citizen from the government's perspective.

Since we are living in a capitalist world, there is another definition of a citizen that you need to know. From the perspective of companies and the corporate world that are controlled by one percent, an ordinary citizen is worthless; a good citizen is the one who consumes the most.

"How?" he asks.

For example, from the perspective of corporations, you are not a good citizen when you use your legs and walk to school every day. (This is directly related to Amir's request that he made a few days ago. He has asked his mom to buy him an electric scooter so that he can commute between home and school.) 

"Why?" Amir asks, using only one-word sentences.

Because you are a healthy person. When you buy an electric scooter, the companies that produced that scooter are happy. The money your dad or mom earns goes directly into the pockets of the bankers and people who invest in that scooter. Their pockets get fatter while your mom and dad's pockets get emptier. And that's not the end of the story. When you are commuting the 15-minute walking distance from home to school on an electric scooter, over time you get fatter, lazier, and more bored, then one day the scooter may get out of your control or break, and you fall to the ground because you are too heavy. Your body may break in two or three places. You need to visit the doctor, and you will have to pay a significant amount of money for surgery and medication. It's not just the banks and corporations that are happy and think you're the best citizen, but the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies, the hospitals, the doctors, and the companies that are built to profit from your sick body, they are all happy because you have to pay for all these expenses, which of course falls on your mom and dad. At this point, you become the best citizen.

Oh, wait, I forgot to add. You sometimes crave soda and fast food, which are all unhealthy because they are processed and they're full of sugar, fat, and salt. They make you sick. You get heart disease or diabetes and dozens of other diseases. The more you consume, the more you become dependent on it. The more unhealthy you become, the more you are loved not only by fast food industries but also by doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies. Because you're paying them money and becoming their customer.

Do you know who is the worst citizen for these people and companies? I ask.

"No. Who is it?" he asks.

A healthy person. Someone who uses his legs walks every day to school. Someone who plays soccer for at least an hour or two a day. Someone who drinks water or tea instead of soda. Someone who eats his mom's food instead of burgers, pizza, chips, and junk food.

As I see it on my screen, a demure calmness envelops his round, innocent face, which I'm unsure is a result of satisfaction or confusion etched on it. I say, "Azizm (my dear), I have to go." I say goodbye to him. His little hand waves on the screen as I pressed the end call button.

Hazaras and their enthusiasm as a weapon against evil

Below is an image that went viral on social media among Afghanistanis. It shows a group of Hazara doctors volunteers from Dasht-e Barchi, a Hazara neighborhood in the West of Kabul, on board a helicopter bound for Kunar. The yellow barrel in front of them is filled with donated blood of Hazaras to the earthquake victims in Kunar, who are all Pashtuns. This is just from one group of Hazara doctors. Looking at this photo and the faces of these Hazara doctors who are going to save the Pashtuns makes me ask, what drives them to such unbridled enthusiasm for Pashtuns who are hostile to them? This happens in the backdrop of the ongoing genocidal campaign against the Hazara people by the Taliban, who are the Pashtuns. How can one absorb this contradiction? There is more to it, though.

image source: from social media

Now, this selfless act of Hazara doctors is both paradoxical and sad. This week, the Taliban decided to transfer the equipment of the only hospital that remained functional in Dasht-e Barchi, the Hazara neighborhood, to district 12, in eastern Kabul, which is predominantly occupied by Pashtuns. This happens despite the repeated pleas from residents of Dasht-e Barchi. Mohammad Ali Jinnah Hospital in Dasht-e Barchi, west of Kabul, was built with Pakistani aid and became functional in 2019. Removing necessary equipment from the hospital is detrimental because it directly hampers patient care and causes operational inefficiencies. 

Muhammad Ali Jinnah Hospital in the west of Kabul. Image source: social media

Afghanistan earthquake: men are saved while women left under rubble

A second earthquake brought more devastation to Afghanistanis in the Southern part of the country. Now the death toll has passed 1,400, and nearly 4,000 or more are injured. On September 3rd, I wrote a blog post about how "Afghan" women -I mean Pashtun women - are buried twice, once by natural earthquake, a second time by Pashtun men. The next day, on September 4th, an article in the New York Times by Fatima Faizi detailed the same concerns I had expressed the day before. 

The summary of the article is that women die under the rubble while men are saved. The reason why women are still under the rubble or remain under the rubble is that their male mahrams (lawful individuals or members of close family) are all lost and dead under the rubble, and there is no mahram left to save their women. On the other hand, the male rescuers who come from the village and the surrounding areas are not mahrams and by Pashtun tradition are not allowed to get close to women who are already dead or still alive, or those who are injured and remain under the rubble. Here is a quote:

In the village of Andarluckak, in Kunar Province, the emergency team hurriedly carried out wounded men and children, and treated their wounds, said Ms. Aysha, 19. But she and other women and adolescent girls, some of them bleeding, were pushed aside, she said. “They gathered us in one corner and forgot about us,” she said. No one offered the women help, asked what they needed or even approached them.

She cites a woman where an injured woman is waiting for help by the wall, but no one is willing to approach her.

In a war-torn, afflicted country like Afghanistan, while everyone is dying of hunger, an ignorant and brute group that descended from mountains and caves now controls the country, tries to enforce the Pashtun tradition on everybody else in the country. On the one hand, hunger, poverty, and misery wreak havoc; on the other hand, natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, and now the Taliban has been added to it. Crisis upon crisis. The Taliban themselves are a serious catastrophe, and implementing the Pashtun tradition on other ethnic groups in Afghanistan is another disaster and crisis.

Buried twice: women and earthquake

According to Reuters, the estimated death toll of the earthquake in southeastern Afghanistan has exceeded 1,400, and more than 3,100 injuries. It is heartbreaking to see this much pain in an already afflicted country, stretched resources, on top of a political crisis that has been ravaging since the Taliban takeover. But the saddest part of this earthquake is that women, girls, and children are the immediate victims. While earthquakes don't discriminate between their victims, society does. 

I observed dozens of videos and photos taken by people on the scene or journalists who had visited the disaster-stricken area. In all photographs, men are rushing to recover bodies of men from under rubble, from trapped alcoves, or men who are injured, and then they are rushed to the helicopter and vehicles, but women are nowhere to be seen in the photos. Perhaps, they are not photographed due to the Pashtun strict cultural tradition towards women, or perhaps, they are being helped but not photographed. I don't know, but I have a hunch from seeing the photos and videos that women are the immediate victims of this kind of catastrophe because they are inside the house who take care of children, while men are mostly outside due to the gendered division of labor. 

At the end, I wonder, what happens to women who are under rubble? I feel strict Pashtun cultural norms hurt their women even in times of crisis.