A perpetual fear and life for the Hazara under the Taliban

For the Hazara people in Afghanistan, life has always been shadowed by a deep-seated dread. To be Hazara in this country is to live with a perpetual, gnawing anxiety, a kind of fear that has taken up residence in the back of your mind. No matter the depth of your sacrifice or your willingness to lay down your life for your country, a persistent, haunting fear lingers on the horizon, tormenting your spirit constantly. That fear is a simple, devastating question: "Will the Pashtuns ever allow us to live in peace?"

This is an existential fear, it strikes at the very core of one's right to exist.

This terror is now manifesting anew in the forced exodus of Hazaras from their ancestral villages and lands, which has been going on since the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. Since then, over 1,000 families have been evicted from their homes and villages. Recently, the Taliban issued a new ultimatum, this time to the Hazara community of Nowabad, a small yet densely populated area in Ghazni, home to over 12,000 people. 

The ultimatum says they must either abandon their homes, repurchase their homes, or pay rent to remain in their homes. The Taliban have declared the area "Emirate's land," a tactic they replicate wherever Hazaras live and wherever and whenever they want to forcefully remove them. It is a profound act of symbolic violence, in that they basically erase Hazaras' historical and cultural connection to the land, their own land. What anthropologists term as territorial alienation is a precursor to physical annihilation. This is Pashtun tribal fascism in practice, and for the Hazaras, it always comes down to a choice between three impossible options, a tripartite trap from which they have never escaped.

This pattern is grimly familiar. In 1998, when the Taliban seized Mazar and launched their massacre of the Hazaras, they presented three conditions: leave Afghanistan, convert to Sunni Islam, or be ready to die. They proceeded to carry out both mass slaughter and forced displacement. It appears that the same engine of tribal fascism is now rolling forward once again, following its old, brutal tracks.

For the Hazaras, who were still savoring the sweet victory of the Afghanistani futsal team, mostly made up of Hazara boys, this new threat is a bitter drop in the cup of their joy. It feels like a sudden, cold wave, or a physical blow to the gut that instantly extinguishes any celebration, replacing it with the familiar grip of fear and pain. This is the precarious reality in which the Hazara people now find themselves.

For the Hazara, true peace remains an elusive dream in their own land.

Note: A version of this was published in Farsi on my Farsi blog