Fieldnotes on Humanity

American anthropologist Louis Dupree, in the early 1980s, coined the term "migratory genocide" in reference to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent displacement of hundreds of thousands of Afghanistani refugees to neighboring countries. His point was that the Soviet invasion had caused the forced displacement of the local population. In other words, Soviet forces deliberately employed military tactics to make people abandon their homes.  Now, the Taliban are doing precisely what the Soviets did, even worse than that but they are doing it against the Hazaras people. Recently, in the Panjab district in Bamiyan province, the Taliban forcibly evicted 25 Hazara families from their homes , essentially imposing forced displacement. Since August 2021, more than a thousand families in different regions of Hazaristan (or Hazarajat) have been forcibly displaced from their homes and villages. This is a clear example of the same "migratory genocide" or what coul...

Fearing of alienating Turkey, for decades US presidents have tried to avoid recognizing the events of 1915-1923 that led to 1.5 million death of Armenians at the hands Turks as "genocide." Finally, today, Biden is going to acknowledge the Ottoman Turks atrocities as genocide . It is considered to be the most monstrous crime against humanity to have occurred in the outset of the twentieth century. But it is not the only one, in fact, almost 25 years before another genocide occurred against indigenous population of the Hazaras in Afghanistan. Abdul Rahman khan, a Pashtun leader organized a mass genocidal campaign between 1888 and 1893 in order to subjugate the Hazaras in Hazarajat, a geographical area in central Afghanistan. The Pashtun Sunni mullahs declared fatwas that the Hazaras are infidel and they must be killed. Suddenly, every Pashtun rose up to become ghazi, someone who kills non-Muslim for pleasing the Muslim God and wishes to enter to heaven.  In addition to governm...