HUNTING THE HAZARA

MAR 11 2014 

BY KHALED AHMED



Minhaj Ahmed Rafi—Newsweek
IF THERE EVER WAS A SIGN OF THE DEMISE OF THE PAKISTANI STATE, IT IS THE KILLING OF THE HAZARA COMMUNITY OF QUETTA.

In Pakhtun-dominated Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, they look different. Fair skinned but clearly mongoloid, they arouse curiosity and primal hatred. They belong to the Shia sect among a hardline Sunni city where the presence of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban has produced a terrorist mix seldom seen elsewhere in Pakistan. The Hazara of Quetta are in the crosshairs of the sectarian manifestation of the Taliban-Al Qaeda dominion in Pakistan.

On Jan. 21 this year, a bus carrying Hazara youths returning from pilgrimage to Shia shrines in Iran—many mixing business with faith—were blown up by a suicide-bomber’s car in the Mastung district approaching Quetta. Over 24 mangled bodies were extracted from the wreck of the pulverized bus. The Hazara of Quetta went through their routine of laying the dead bodies out on Alamdar Road and refused to bury them until the state of Pakistan pledged to take action against the killers. They pointedly rejected any assurances from the provincial government, which they have long perceived as impotent.

Two days of vigil by men, women and children alongside the limbs collected from Mastung produced results: Pakistan’s interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, accompanied by Sen. Pervaiz Rashid, the information minister, flew to Quetta and vowed to take action. Accordingly, on Jan. 24, the paramilitary Frontier Corps and police swept through Mastung with a 350-strong force and arrested dozens of suspected “militants.” Special military flights were arranged for the rest of the Hazara pilgrims stranded on the Pakistan-Iran border post to avoid another bloodbath.

This was not the first target-killing on Mastung Road. In the past months, the Hazara were repeatedly offloaded from buses by gun-toting men, stood before a firing squad, and executed as the non-Hazara passengers stood aside and cowered. The Mastung Road approach to Quetta is a deathtrap despite the fact that the district contains a cadet college supplying Baloch manpower to the Army. (In the other stricken province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the district of Bannu, too, has a cadet college, but is entirely at the mercy of the Taliban.)

But this year’s massacre recalled the biggest act of mass murder in the city of Quetta. On Jan. 10, over a hundred Hazara, including women and children, died after a vehicle full of a quantity of explosives not seen in the country before destroyed a market town where the Shia have become ghettoized.

The mourners refused to leave the street where they had assembled the dismembered bodies of their families until the government ensured action against the killers. The Hazara didn’t believe a word of what the politicians said because their extermination, often referred to as genocide, had become routine. This routine began years ago with the rise of the Punjab-based Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian outfit whose name appears on the Al Qaeda flag along with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Jandullah.

In 2011, at least 26 Hazara were shot dead execution-style on Mastung Road. Terrorists had intercepted a bus going to Taftan, a town near the Pakistan-Iran border, had singled out all Hazara men, and shot them dead. Terrorists stayed at the scene for 10 minutes firing with AK-47s to ensure no one survived. Then they ambushed and killed several Hazara rushing to the scene to take their dead relatives to hospital.

From 2008 to 2012, Balochistan witnessed 758 Shia killed in 478 incidents. Of these, 338 victims belonged to the Hazara community, indicating that the Hazara remain the prime target of this violent schism....Continue Reading... 

2 Star-Crossed Afghans Cling to Love, Even at Risk of Death

By ROD NORDLAND

MARCH 9, 2014

BAMIAN, Afghanistan — She is his Juliet and he is her Romeo, and her family has threatened to kill them both.

Zakia is 18 and Mohammad Ali is 21, both the children of farmers in this remote mountain province. If they could manage to get together, they would make a striking couple.

She dresses colorfully, a pink head scarf with her orange sweater, and collapses into giggles talking about him. He is a bit of a dandy, with a mop of upswept black hair, a white silk scarf and a hole in the side of his saddle-toned leather shoes. Both have eyes nearly the same shade, a startling amber.

They have never been alone in a room together, but they have publicly declared their love for each other and their intention to marry despite their different ethnicities and sects. That was enough to make them outcasts, they said, marked for death for dishonoring their families — especially hers.

Zakia has taken refuge in a women’s shelter here. Even though she is legally an adult under Afghan law, the local court has ordered her returned to her family. “If they get hold of me,” she said matter-of-factly, “they would kill me even before they get me home.”Photo

Zakia, 18, in Bamian, Afghanistan, said her marriage plans led to family death threats.CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times

Neither can read, and they have never heard Shakespeare’s tale of doomed love. But there are plenty of analogues in the stories they are both steeped in, and those, too, end tragically.

Zakia invokes one, the tale of Princess Shirin and Farhad the stonecutter, as she talks about her beloved, and her long wait in the women’s shelter to marry him. “I would wait until I reach my love, no matter how long,” she said.

In 21st-century Afghanistan, as well, life is no fairy tale, especially in rural places like Bamian. Young people who want to choose their own mates face the harsh reality that strict social traditions still trump new laws and expanded rights — and that honor killings in such cases remain endemic.... Continue Reading...

Afghan Hazaras Emerge as Power Brokers in President Elections

Major Candidates Courting Votes of Important Ethnic Minority

By 

NATHAN HODGE and  EHSANULLAH AMIRI CONNECT

Updated March 7, 2014 7:55 p.m. ET

Workers from Afghanistan's Hazara ethnic minority chat while waiting for customers at a market in the capital, Kabul, in September. Associated Press

KABUL—Afghanistan's once-persecuted ethnic Hazara minority, which has made strong economic and political gains since the U.S. ousted the Taliban in 2001, has emerged as a formidable power broker in the April presidential election.

The mostly Shiite Muslim Hazaras are estimated to represent 9% of the nation's population, the third largest ethnic group, and they have a high level of participation in elections, which is one reason presidential candidates these days are busy courting their vote.

Four of the six leading candidates have selected Hazara running mates in their bid to succeed Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who must step down this year, and who has a Hazara vice president himself.

Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, one of the most likely candidates to make it to a runoff, is running with Mohammed Mohaqeq, a Hazara and prominent former warlord.

Mr. Mohaqeq heads a faction of Hezb-e Wahdat, an armed party that fought against the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1980, and clashed with other ethnic militias during the civil war in the 1990s. Hundreds of Hazara civilians were killed in the so-called Afshar massacre, a 1993 looting spree by a rival militia in western Kabul during the civil war.... Continue Reading... 

My name is Marziya.

Hazara children: Still life

Fazil Mousavi pumps hope and colour into the ethnically fragmented lives of Hazara children. PHOTOS: DANIAL SHAH

By Danial Shah / Photo: Danial Shah / Creative: Munira Abbas

Red may run through the lives of Hazaras in Quetta but their children still manage to paint a positive picture. At the Sketch Club in Mariabad, that boasts the oldest Hazara settlement in the eastern half of the city since the late 18th century, parents enroll their children to nurture their artistic talent.


A student practices drawing clay pots at the Sketch Club . PHOTOS: DANIAL SHAH

It’s not hard to spot the club tucked away in the middle of a row of stores and houses in the neighbourhood. The words ‘Sketch Club’ are painted in an oblique font on the signboard at the entrance, cemented in place over a stand-out white steel gate. A flight of stairs lead up to an open terrace where children sit in broad daylight, with their sketchbooks and shading pencils in tow. Inspired by an astounding view of the Mariabad valley, where houses are built in succession one above the other, they begin to sketch the object placed before them, taking instructions from their maestro on how to add highlights and texture to their drawing.

“I was teaching art at a school when I felt the need to [pass on] my skill to my community, hence the concept of ‘Sketch Club’ came into being,” says the 54-year-old drawing instructor, Fazil Mousavi. After completing his degree in Fine Arts at the University of Balochistan, in 1988, at a time where only one other known Hazara student graduated with him, he started work as a freelance artist, participating and winning prizes at nationwide exhibitions till 2002 and holding a solo exhibit at the Museum Willem van Haren, Holland, in 2007. But Mousavi’s vision was fulfilled with having his very own sketch club in Quetta, where he now offers psychological and emotional catharsis through art to Hazara boys and girls....Continue Reading... 

Maryam Mukhtiyar,a Pakistani female undergoing fighter pilot

Post by Pakistan Defence.