Amin Saikal: the scholar who advocated for the Expulsion of the Hazara Immigrants from Australia

There is a plethora of studies and surveys on discrimination from host societies directed towards immigrants and refugees in Western countries, but studies on discrimination and prejudice from one immigrant group against another immigrant group are few and far between. In a year and a half of my fieldwork in the Washington, D.C. area, I have found that Hazara immigrants are suffering from discrimination, particularly from Afghan/Pashtun and Tajik immigrants. I will write about this another time, but now, Amin Saikal. 

He is an Afghan origin retired university professor in Australia. Born into a family of diplomat and upper-class ethno-hybrid Tajik-Pashtun parents, Saikal holds unearned privileges in life that the Hazara, whom he dislikes so much, cannot afford. "He is unaware of his privileges, and I doubt he would bother now, at the end of his life, to become introspective about the very privileges he is enjoying tied to historic and enduring racism and biases against the Hazara people," told me Ahmad - psydynam - an old classmate of his from high school in Kabul. Amin Saikal belongs to the Tajik ethnic group, one of the country's ruling ethnic groups.

He is married to a white Aussie woman, another societal privilege that brings him an abundance of social advantage over other racial or ethnic groups, particularly the Hazaras in Australia. They have three daughters, all of whom are successful. Saikal has written many books on Afghanistan and Iran. With this brief introduction, he is well-educated and a successful scholar, except that he has a dark side, and he does not hide it: he hates the Hazara immigrants in Australia. 

On November 03, 2010, journalist Alexandra Kirk from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio conducted an interview with Amin Saikal regarding the condition of the Hazaras in Afghanistan and why the Hazaras are risking their lives to arrive in Australia by boat. This was at a time when there was a big search for Hazara immigrants fleeing the Taliban atrocities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reaching Indonesia, and from there risking their lives on boats to reach Australia.

Instead of explaining the dire situation that the Hazaras lived in, he claimed that Afghanistan is the safest place for Hazaras to live, and should the Australian government expel them to Afghanistan, there would be no problem. They are safe in Afghanistan, he said. Saikal went on to explain where Hazaras could live safely if they were returned to Afghanistan. 

In some ways, he proposed the expulsion of the Hazara immigrants and refugees from Australia back to Afghanistan, a country they were fleeing from because of the systematic atrocities. 

This was a time when Tony Abbott's anti-immigration opposition party was planning policies against migration and asylum seekers. Hazara migrants formed a significant portion of those arriving in Australia by boat, many of whom were fleeing systematic oppression and violence. Most of those who risked their lives were Hazaras living in refugee camps in Quetta or resettled. 

Between 2005 and 2010, as the Taliban began regrouping and gaining ground in the southern part of Afghanistan, violence against Hazaras spiked. On the other side of the border to the south, in Quetta, Pakistan, the situation for Hazaras was deteriorating. In the years 2010, 2011, and 2012, targeted and serial killings of Hazaras in Quetta were rampant. 

Some of those targeted attacks were reported in Human Rights Watch's Farsi reports from those exact years, when Amin Saikal was advocating for the Hazaras ' expulsion from Australia. During the very same years, Saikal claimed that Afghanistan was safe for Hazaras. In Afghanistan, during those years, Kuchis (Pashtun nomads) attacked Hazaras, drove them out of their lands, destroyed their pastures, and the Taliban put checkpoints on the highways, arresting Hazara men and beheading them. 

As a result, hundreds were killed, and thousands were displaced. In the Jalrez, famously called by Hazaras the "death valley," Hazara people were beheaded on a daily basis. It was around this time that Amin Saikal intensified his antagonism and advocacy for Hazara immigrants to Afghanistan by penning "scholarly" pieces painting Hazaras as stewards of their destiny through power they shared with Pashtuns and others. In his interviews, he described Afghanistan as the safest place for Hazaras, ignoring the ongoing genocidal violence. 

In the following interview with ABC Radio, Amin Saikal clearly proposed and justified the expulsion of the Hazara immigrants from Australia. 

You can listen to his interview with Alexandra Kirk but here is the transcript:

ELEANOR HALL: Last night's arrival of two more boatloads of asylum seekers will see the Federal Government overtake a record that had been held by the Howard government.

Labor now presides over the largest annual intake of asylum seekers arriving by boat with the number of arrivals so far this year coming in at 5,547.

The Government says it expects that a higher proportion of Sri Lankan and Afghan refugee claims will now be rejected, arguing that conditions in those two countries have improved.

But Professor Amin Saikal who heads the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University told Alexandra Kirk that the measures used to judge whether Afghans should be granted refugee status are too restrictive.

AMIN SAIKAL: Well I think their information by and large is correct. And I think it does provide justification for some of the Government policies.

But what I'm really concerned about is specifically in relation to the status of Hazara because the bulk of the asylum seekers who have come to Australia are made up of people from the Shi'ite sect of Islam in Afghanistan which constitutes about 15 to 20 per cent of the population.

And as far as I understand that the situation is not as desperate for the Hazara population of Afghanistan or for that matter the Shi'ite population of Afghanistan these days as it has been in the past, particularly when the Taliban was ruling the country.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: So what's your concern then?

AMIN SAIKAL: My concern now is that that situation of the Hazaras are pretty much the same as many other groups in their country. And in fact I think the Hazaras are having better security and more stability in the areas where they are concentrated, than has been the case in the past.

I think it singles out the Hazaras as fairly deprived in this group. And what I'm basically trying to say that while that has been really the case in the past, but I think in the current situation in Afghanistan the standing of the Hazaras has improved in the sense that they do have a share in the power structure in the country and they have a share in the running of the government.

And the areas where they are concentrated, that is central Afghanistan and western Afghanistan, is relatively the most peaceful and secure areas in the country.

And of course the governor of Bamiyan who herself is a Hazara and the first woman to become a governor in the history of Afghanistan has important plans, not only for a cultural development but also building a new city for the Hazaras.

And the New Zealanders have deployed their troops and have done a very good job and provincial reconstruction team that they are running.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Are you saying that it would be safer to return Hazaras to a number of areas in Afghanistan, safer than the guide suggests?

AMIN SAIKAL: I think there is going to be no impediment as far as I can see for the return of the Hazaras to Afghanistan provided that they are, and they are willing to return to their areas where there is concentration of the Hazaras, areas that is in central Afghanistan and western Afghanistan. And those areas are fairly safe.

Of course if you do return the Hazaras to the southern and eastern province of Afghanistan which is the hotbed of fighting between the Taliban and government forces and their international supporters, then obviously their life would be more in danger.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: So you don't think that Hazaras returning to areas where Hazaras are in a majority would face persecution?

AMIN SAIKAL: I don't think so for a minute that that would really happen.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: You think then that the guide is too conservative when it comes to you know whether it's safe for Hazaras to return there, to some areas of Afghanistan?

AMIN SAIKAL: I think that is very, that is the case to a considerable extent. And if Hazaras if returned to provinces where the Hazaras form the majority I think they can feel very safe.

And at the same time you are not going to really suffer any more than many other peoples in Afghanistan who are living, other ethnic groups or sectarian groups who are living in different parts of the country apart from the south and eastern Afghanistan, which is basically where the fighting is concentrated.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Professor Amin Saikal from the ANU's Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies speaking to Alexandra Kirk in Canberra.

In one part, Amin Saikal states that Hazaras in Afghanistan never face problems and could be sent back, particularly to areas where most Hazaras live, such as Hazarajat. He claims there are "areas where there is the concentration of the Hazaras, areas that are in central Afghanistan and western Afghanistan,"  which is a prescription for the expulsion of the Hazaras in Afghanistan.

"I think it’s clear that these are baseless claims. He is perhaps overwhelmed by his prejudice against the Hazara people," Ahmad, his high school classmate, said. 

"He is bitter and mean," Ahmad said, explaining that in high school, he disliked students who performed better than him. "On many occasions, he fought with us. He could not control his anger," he added. 

In 2013, at a conference on Afghanistan in New York, while delivering a presentation by a PhD on the condition of the Hazaras, Amin Saikal stood up from the audience and began shouting, questioning the findings of the student and accusing her of spreading false information. "Stop it! The Hazaras have no problems in Afghanistan." He shouted and did not allow the student to finish her presentation. She wept right there on the stage.

Amin Saikal even propagated the idea that the Hazara refugees were fraudsters because he believed they were Pakistanis. One immigration caseworker wrote on his Facebook page that Mahmoud Saikal, Amin Saikal's brother, who was Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia at the time, once said that he labeled Hazaras as "imposters," claiming they were all actually Pakistanis.

It is known that immigrants bring their pre-existing social and cultural experiences and perspectives with them. In the State of California, in Silicon Valley, the caste system has been practiced by Indians, which is a practice that was recently outlawed by the state. Seattle was the first city to ban case practice. 

In the past several years and during my fieldwork, I came across individuals who said they were discriminated against at the resettlement agencies when the caseworkers were non-Hazaras.  So, just like Indians, Afghans/Pashtuns, and Tajiks, individuals like Amin Saikal bring their caste-based discrimination and ethnic prejudices with them to Australia, Europe, and America. 

In the United States, I have documented numerous cases in which Hazaras have been discriminated against by Pashtun and Tajik immigrants and refugees. In the next blog post, I will write about his journal article on the state of the Hazara people in Afghanistan. He basically penned everything he said in the interview and turned it into a journal article, which shamefully paints Afghanistan as the safest place for Hazaras. It was a blueprint for Hazaras' expulsion from Australia.

Note: I initially explored the topic discussed above in 2023 in a series of blog posts on my Farsi blog, which I'm linking here. 

طرح امین صیقل برای اخراج هزاره ها از آسترالیا

امین صیقل: یک ضدهزاره به تمام معنا

محمود صیقل و امین صیقل: دو برادر هزاره ستیز

زبان تحقیرآمیز امین صیقل