At least 61 dead, 207 wounded in Kabul demonstration attack

At least 61 people were killed and 207 were wounded on Saturday in a suicide attack on a demonstration in Kabul claimed by Islamic State, an official from the Public Health Ministry said.

The deaths are more than double earlier estimates....Continue Reading...

The Atlantic: Life as One of the Most Persecuted Ethnic Groups on the Planet

You are a Hazara, and you've been on the run for centuries. Now you're in Syria, and things aren't looking up.

JEFFREY E. STERN
MAY 21, 2013
GLOBAL


Three girls from the Hazara ethnic group sit in a cave in Bamiyan, Afghanistan on December 15, 2001. The Taliban forced tens of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims to flee into the mountains during their rule over the country in the 1990s and early 2000s. (Peter Andrews/Reuters)

Imagine that you live in Afghanistan. Your ancestors have lived there for hundreds of years, but you are a minority. In fact, you are a minority two times over, because the religion you practice is different from the one most people practice, and the way you look is different from the way most people look.

In the 1890's, Emir Abdur Rahman comes along. He is a king who reserves special scorn for your people, and in order to control territory and to scare troublesome groups into obedience, he makes an example out of yours. Your people are easy to target -- the different-believers, the different-lookers....Continue Reading...

LA Times: An ethnically charged dispute over electricity brings protesters into Kabul's streets

Afghan protesters from the Hazara minority clash with riot police in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. They were protesting the controversial rerouting of a new power line. (Jawad Jalali / European Pressphoto Agency)
Ali M. Latifi

Residents of the Afghan capital awoke Monday to stacks of multi-colored shipping containers meant to protect the presidential palace from the latest anti-government demonstration — this time over an electricity line from Turkmenistan.

The demonstrators — mainly members of the Hazara ethnic minority — were demanding that a 500-kilovolt power transmission line from Turkmenistan be routed through the central province of Bamiyan, home to a large Hazara population.

Bamiyan suffers from chronic electricity shortages, and when it was revealed recently that the power line would instead be routed through the rugged Salang Pass — the highway connecting northern and southern Afghanistan — before reaching Kabul, many Hazaras criticized what they saw as a racially and politically motivated decision.



Police fire water cannons as protesters from the Hazara minority protest the rerouting of a power line.

Bamiyan had been part of the original route for the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan power project, known as TUTAP, which officials say will unite Afghanistan’s 10 separate power grids and bring electricity to millions of homes that lack it...Continue Reading....

France 24: Can a pipeline route kill Afghan Hazara pipe dreams?

© Wakil Kohsar, AFP / An Afghan protester holds a kerosene lamp at a Kabul protest over the TUTAP electricity project on May 16, 2016.

Text by Leela JACINTO

Latest update : 2016-05-17

Anger among Afghanistan’s minority Hazara group over the rerouting of a planned power transmission line is exposing old ethnic fault lines in a very modern way.

It was not the sort of showdown the august gathering at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a venerable London-based think tank, typically appreciates.

On Thursday, May 12, as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was addressing a gathering at the 185-year-old British institution, an audience member stood up and proceeded to heckle the Afghan leader.

“You’re a liar,” said the heckler, pointing at the Afghan president as the grey-suited gathering stiffened their upper lips and stared resolutely ahead. Afghan security quickly descended on the protester, who bore the distinctive Central Asian features of a Hazara -- a historically persecuted minority now flexing their democratic muscles -- and hustled him out of the room...Continue Reading....

فعالان مدنی، راهپیمایی روز دوشنبه جنبش روشنایی را بی نظیر و تاریخی می خوانند

Aljazeera: Inside Story - Are Afghanistan's Hazaras marginalised?

NYTimes: Huge Protest Against Afghan Government Brings Kabul to a Halt

Thousands of protesters marched in Afghanistan’s capital on Monday in the country’s largest demonstration since 2014. CreditWakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

KABUL, Afghanistan — A large demonstration against the fragile Afghan government brought Kabul to a standstill on Monday and put security forces on alert, with the authorities stacking shipping containers to block all routes to the city center and the presidential palace.

The demonstration, which was driven by ethnic Hazaras’ outrage over the proposed route for a new electricity transmission line, tapped a deep well of factional tensions and frustration over the government of President Ashraf Ghani.

Though most of the protest remained peaceful, some demonstrators pelted the container blockades with rocks and acted violently toward at least five reporters. The security forces resorted to sporadic use of water cannons to disperse people.

Thousands of demonstrators marched from the west of Kabul to demand that the government abandon its decision to reroute the line, which would transmit electricity from Turkmenistan. The line was initially supposed to go through Bamian, a Hazara-dominated central province that is one of the most deprived in the country. But the current proposed route avoids the province,..... Continue Reading...