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Kite Fight | Op-Docs | The New York Times

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Though their exact number is uncertain and as with other communities are contested, relatively recent estimates have suggested that Hazaras make up around 9 per cent of the population. They were once the largest Afghan ethnic group constituting nearly 67 per cent of the total population of the state before the 19th century. More than half were massacred in 1893 when their autonomy was lost as a result of political action. The origins of Hazara community are much debated, the word Hazara means 'thousand' in Persian but given the Hazaras' typical physical features, current theory supports their descent from Mongol soldiers left behind by Genghis Khan in the 13th century.

The majority of Hazaras live in Hazarajat (or Hazarestan),' land of the Hazara', which is situated in the rugged central mountainous core of Afghanistan with an area of approximately 50,000 sq. km., with others living in the Badakhshan mountains. In the aftermath of Kabul's campaign against them in the late 19 th century, many Hazaras settled in western Turkestan, in JauzJan and Badghis provinces. Ismaili Hazaras, a smaller religiously differentiated group of Hazaras, live in the Hindu Kush mountains. The most recent two decades of war have driven many Hazaras away from their traditional heartland to live on the fringes of the state in close proximity to Iran and Pakistan. There is also a large cross-border community of Hazaras who make up an influential ethnic group in the Pakistani border city of Quetta.

Hazaras speak a dialect of Dari (Farsi dialect) called Hazaragi and the vast majority follow the Shi'a sect (Twelver Imami) of Islam. A significant number are also followers of the Ismaili sect while a small number are Sunni Muslim. Within Afghan culture, Hazaras are famous for their music and poetry and the proverbs from which their poetry stems. The poetry and music are mainly folkloric having been passed down orally through the generations. In 1880, the Hazara community comprised of landed nobility, peasants and artisans. The social class structure was that of the ruling and the ruled classes, which itself was based on ownership of the means of production (animals, land and water).

Systematic discrimination, as well as often repeated targeted violence and resulting displacement, has led the Hazara community to lose much of their standing in the social hierarchy of modern Afghanistan. Their engagement in unskilled labour has resulted in further stigmatization, with a clear indicator of this being the low rate of inter-ethnic marriages with Hazaras. Perhaps as a consequence of this, Hazaras have been relatively isolated from other cultural influences, and their identity has remained relatively static.

Hazaras are reported to have nuclear families with the husband considered the head of the family except in the case of husband's death when the woman becomes the head. In the latter case, the older wife in polygamous marriages succeeds the deceased husband until the eldest sun reaches maturity. At national level, Hazaras tend to be more progressive concerning women's rights to education and public participation. Educated Hazara women, in particular, those who returned from exile in Iran are often as active as men in civic and political arenas. Hazara families are eager to educate their daughters. UN officials in Bamyan, the largest town in Hazarajat (as well as the name of the province surrounding it), have reported that since the collapse of Taliban rule in late 2001, aid agencies have scrambled to build schools and have succeeded in attracting qualified female teachers to meet the demand.

Historical context

Hazaras are believed to have settled in Afghanistan at least as far back as the thirteenth century. The Shi'a Hazaras are historically the most discriminated ethnic minority group in the state and have seen little improvement in their situation despite the recent changes. While President Karzai did appoint six Hazaras to his cabinet, there appears to be no reduction in the discrimination facing the majority of the Hazara population of Afghanistan. Forced to migrate to Kabul in the second half of the 20 th century due to persecution, their low socio-economic status has created a class as well as an ethnic division between them and the rest of urban Afghan society.

Economic pressures and social and political repression have resulted in Hazaras combining with other Shi'a minority groups during the 1960s and 1970s and playing a prominent role in the prolonged civil war for the past two decades. During the resistance in the mid-1980s, Hazaras maintained their own resistance group, some of which had ties with Iran.

As an ethnic group, Hazaras have always lived on the edge of economic survival in Afghanistan. The recent persecution of Hazaras was not instigated by the Taliban but had existed for centuries - during which Hazaras were driven out of their lands, sold as slaves and lacked access to the essential services otherwise available to the majority of the population. One of the main factors in Hazaras' continued persecution is their Shi'a religious faith, their distinctive ethnic origins, as well as their having separate economic and political roots.

Historically, the minority Shi'a, regardless of ethnicity, have faced long-term persecution from the majority Sunni population. From the 1880s onwards, and especially during the reign of Amir Abdul Rahman (1880-1901), they suffered severe political, social and economic repression, as Jihad was declared by Sunni leaders on all Shi'as of Afghanistan. As the Pashtun Rahman started to extend his influence from Kabul by force to other parts of the country, the Hazaras were the first ethnic group to revolt against his expansionism. Pashtun tribes were sent to the central highlands to crush the revolt. Thousands of Hazara men were killed, their women and children taken as slaves, and their lands occupied. To strengthen the forces against the Hazara rebellion that followed, Rahman played on Sunni religious sensibilities and even attracted Tajiks and Uzbeks (both Sunnis) to help the Pashtuns against the Shi'a Hazaras. Those who survived the initial period of the raids managed to escape to the north while a significant number fled to then British India. Apart from Pashtuns, Uzbeks are also thought to have conducted slave raids on the Hazaras in Bamyan and elsewhere.

Rahman's suppression of Hazara ranged from issuing unwarranted taxes to assaults on Hazara women, massacres, looting and pillaging of homes, enslavement of Hazara children, women and men, and replacement of Shi'a clerics with their Sunni religious counterparts. Hazarajat was occupied by Rahman in 1893 and it is estimated that 60 per cent of the Hazara population was wiped out by him.

The persecution of Hazaras continued throughout the 19 th century and during the Monarchy (1929 onwards) when during the process of 'Pashtunization' Hazaras were made to conceal their identities to obtain state identification. It is suggested that until the 1970s some Sunni religious teachers preached that the killing of Hazaras was a key to paradise.

Economically Hazarajat was kept undeveloped with no roads, schools or clinics. The Hazaras have typically voiced their dissent to the policies of overt discrimination against them since the 1970s through a unified opposition movement; the main Hazara party, Hizb-e Wahdat (Party of Unity), was established in 1988. In 1992, after the Mujahidin took power, fighting between the various groups broke out. Violent attacks occurred in Kabul between Mujahidin leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's Ittehad-i-Islami and Hizb-e Wahdat. Some of the other parties joined the fighting, intensifying the conflict and at one point leading Hizb-e Wahdat also to attack President Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jamiat-e Islami positions. Jamiat, under Rabbani's chief commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, launched retaliatory artillery attacks on Hizb-e Wahdat, killing many Hazaras. Amnesty International subsequently reported the killing of many unarmed civilians and the rape of many Hazara women. In February 1993, hundreds of Hazara residents in the Afshar district of West Kabul were massacred by government forces under the direction of Rabbani and Massoud, joined by Ittehad-i-Islami. The fighting saw the utter devastation of large areas of Kabul, particularly those inhabited by Hazaras.

Between 1992-1995, Abdul Ali Mazari became the first political leader to speak out at the international level for, and on behalf of Hazaras, putting their case to the UN and the international community. He unified the Hazara people by bringing together the many sections, forces and classes within Hazara and Shi'a society. Mazari signed an agreement with the Taliban leadership in 1993 but was brutally murdered by them in 1995. In the same year, Hizb-e Wahdat joined the new anti-Taliban Shura-ye Ali-ye Difa under the leadership of Abdul Rashid Dostum. During this period, schools (including a new girls' school) were reopened in 1996, and the University of Bamyan was established.

After the Taliban seized power in 1996, they declared Jihad on the Shi'a Hazaras. In the years that followed, Hazaras faced particularly severe repression and persecution, including a series of mass killings in northern Afghanistan, where thousands of Hazaras lost their lives or were forced to flee their homes. Consequently, Hazaras formed part of the Northern Alliance forces that opposed the Taliban and took power after the Taliban fell in 2001.

A key moment in recent Hazara history is the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas by the Taliban in 2001. The giant Buddha statues had long been central to the identity of the Hazara community. Although not built by the Hazaras themselves, who only came to have an ethnolinguistic identity based in the region some centuries later, they have their own myths associated with the statues, unrelated to Buddhism. In Hazara folklore, the statues are of a star-crossed couple Salsal and Shahmama, whose doomed love ends tragically in both their deaths. The two remain forever separated, petrified in stone, looking across the Bamyan valley.

However, the statues, long celebrated internationally, achieved less welcome attention in 2001 when the Taliban dynamited them, leaving behind little more than empty voids. While in international media this wanton destruction has been characterized as an assertion of the Taliban's extreme reading of Islam, whereby representations of human features in art is forbidden, the targeting of the statues was also an assertion of Taliban dominance over Hazaras and their homeland. The destruction was, in fact, part of a larger campaign by the Taliban to suppress the rights and identity of Hazaras. In a private order to his commanders in 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar specifically instructed that the Hazaras' cultural heritage be destroyed, and the Hazara celebration of Persian New Year, Jashn-e Nouroz, be prohibited. The order also included forced land dispossession, anti-Shi'a propaganda and restrictions on Hazara women, who generally maintained more freedom in their society than other Afghan groups. After the fall of the Taliban, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the remains of the destroyed Bamyan Buddhas a World Heritage Site. International debate continues to rage regarding whether the statues should be reconstructed or not. However, the discussions often disregard the fact that the sculptures are an integral part of Hazara culture and do not always consider the need to involve local communities in any future decisions concerning them.

Since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, the situation of Hazaras in Afghanistan has improved considerably. Hazaras are one of the national ethnic minorities recognized in the new Afghan Constitution and have been given full right to Afghan citizenship. Only two Hazaras gained seats in President Hamid Karzai's initial cabinet, and the only representative of their main political party, Hizb-e Wahdat gained the position of vice president. But in the most recent parliamentary election Hazaras (who make up around 9 per cent of the population) gained 25 per cent of seats. However, Hazaras still face persistent discrimination in many areas of the country.

Current issues

A key issue for the Hazara community is the general climate of impunity, whereby those who committed atrocities - both past and present - to evade justice. Hazaras also remain concerned about the resurgence of the Taliban, who they feel pose a direct threat to their community. There have also been increasing ethnic tensions and incidents of violent clashes between Hazaras and nomadic Kuchis over access to land in recent years. Due to the severity of their persecution under the Taliban, Hazara leaders have insisted, along with leaders of other minority groups, to be included in all negotiations with the Taliban.

With the increasing presence of foreign Islamist groups such as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), active in the country for a number of years, attacks against religious minorities have been on the increase. Being Shi'a and therefore both a religious and a visible ethnic minority, Hazaras are particularly vulnerable. Suicide bombings targeting Hazara public events have taken place with increasing regularity, most of which have been claimed by groups stating allegiance with ISIS. These include, in July 2016, the killing of 85 people at a peaceful protest comprised of mostly Hazaras. It was the deadliest attack on civilians since 2002 and targeted the Hazara on the basis of their Shi'a religious identity. Other attacks include a December 2017 bombing that left at least 41 dead and another 80 injured in a Hazara neighbourhood of western Kabul and an assault in March 2018 that resulted in the deaths of at least nine people. However, the Taliban too is thought to be responsible for the increasing kidnappings of Hazaras, particularly on remote highways, with some of the victims killed while others have been held for ransom.

Some minority women, such as the Hazara women, have traditionally enjoyed more freedom in their society than other ethnic groups. In the post-Taliban period, they have benefited considerably from political and educational reforms. Yet the influence of Shi'a personal laws has threatened that freedom. In 2009 the controversial Shi'a Personal Status Law was passed, stripping Shi'a women, many of whom are Hazara, of some of their basic rights enshrined in the Constitution, including allowing a husband to withhold basic sustenance from his wife for not having sex with him, restricting women from working without permission from their husbands, and denying women custody over their children. The law was reportedly drafted by a powerful Shi'a cleric and pushed through by conservative Shi'a community leaders, who did not adequately consult or protect the rights of Shi'a women.

Poverty and insecurity drive many Hazaras to migrate to cities such as Kabul. However, the journey to Kabul from Hazarajat in the centre of the country has proven dangerous. The main roadway between the two areas - dubbed 'Death Road' - has been the site of kidnappings and other deadly Taliban attacks on Hazaras in recent years. As a result, having successfully arrived in Kabul, Hazaras have often been unable or afraid to return to their previous homes. This violence on the main roadway has further isolated and thereby stalled the development of Hazarajat, which requires labour and materials from Kabul to build facilities such as schools and clinics. Both these factors have contributed to the high numbers of Hazara currently residing in Kabul, with many concentrated in one overcrowded area, Dasht-e Barchi. Although life in Kabul is relatively improved for Hazaras since 2001, they have continued to occupy lower-status jobs and face harsh discrimination, including in access to facilities and provision of essential services.

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Though their exact number is uncertain and as with other communities are contested, relatively recent estimates have suggested that Hazaras make up around 9 per cent of the population. They were once the largest Afghan ethnic group constituting nearly 67 per cent of the total population of the state before the 19th century.

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An interview with the author of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

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An interview with the author of The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

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The Kite Runner, the debut novel by Afghani-born physician and author Khaled Hosseini, has been on best-seller and book club lists for nearly a year. Writer Isabel Allende says the book -- about a young man who returns to Afghanistan after a long absence -- is "one of those unforgettable stories that stays with you for years."

Hosseini, like the protagonist in his novel, left Afghanistan when he was boy and didn't return for decades. Hosseini was 11 when his family left, before the Soviet invasion. His father was a diplomat, and the family was granted political asylum in America.

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An Afghan Story: Khaled Hosseini and 'Kite Runner'

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The Kite Runner, the debut novel by Afghani-born physician and author Khaled Hosseini, has been on best-seller and book club lists for nearly a year. Writer Isabel Allende says the book - about a young man who returns to Afghanistan after a long absence - is "one of those unforgettable stories that stays with you for years."

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After World War II, as both the United States and the Soviet Union competed for global power, Afghanistan increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for support after the United States established military ties with Pakistan in 1954, according to an October 2001 report from Human Rights Watch.

The Soviets in return used the strategic location of Afghanistan, at the juncture of Asia and the Middle East, to counter the U.S. alliance with Pakistan and the surrounding Persian Gulf states.

The Soviets entered Afghanistan in 1979 with the aim of establishing a key position in Asia, one with trade possibilities and access to Gulf oil, Barnett Rubin said in his book, "The Fragmentation of Afghanistan."

At the time, Afghanistan was a vulnerable monarchy. It was led by King Zahir Shah, who, like his predecessors, was unable to merge the existing tribal society with a central government. This separation of the Afghan elite and the central government from local tribal leaders eventually caused a revolt against the monarchy.

The Saur Revolution of April 1978 in which the Afghan communist party, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, seized power in a coup and killed the country's prime minister, also created space for a foreign invasion into a country that lacked a legitimate government.

Soon after their entry into Afghanistan, the Soviets imposed military and social reforms that began to make enemies within different sectors of the indigenous population. They initiated land reforms that troubled tribal leaders. They implemented economic measures that worsened conditions for the poor, and tried to curb ethnic uprisings by mass arrests, torture, executions of dissidents and aerial bombardments, according to a November 2001 Amnesty International report.

According to Amnesty International, some 1 million Afghans died during this period, with more than 8,000 people were executed after being put on trial between 1980 and 1988.

The crackdown led to resistance by Mujahadeen, or Afghan freedom fighters, who were backed by the United States. In 1988, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, who called the occupation of Afghanistan a "bleeding wound," withdrew his forces from the country.

Afghan divisions
Several events in Afghanistan's history led up to the Soviet invasion and the civil war that followed the withdrawal.

In 1967, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which was the only structured political party in Afghanistan at the time, separated into two rival factions - the more radical "Khalq" that took a traditional view of Marxist ideology, and the "Parcham" that believed in a gradual movement toward socialism for the pre-industrialized Afghanistan.

While the PDPA had initially unified to overthrow the monarchy, which the group believed practiced elitist politics that didn't include the Afghan people, rivalries and differences over ideology led to hostilities between the group's two factions.

On April 27, 1978, the PDPA was able to overthrow the monarchy. The leader of the Khalq faction, Muhammad Taraki became president and renamed Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

By late 1978, however, a rebellion against the Taraki government's policies started an Islamic extremist movement in eastern Afghanistan and spread throughout the country, leading to civil war. Violence increased and Taraki was killed the same year in a palace shootout by rebel groups, according to a May 2006 U.S. State Department report.

Hafizullah Amin, Taraki's deputy prime minister, assumed power.

However, Oleg Grinevsky, a former Soviet ambassador to Sweden, said in his book "The Secrets of the Soviet Diplomacy" that the Soviet Union's intelligence agency the KGB, which was monitoring Afghanistan after the invasion, released information claiming that Amin was incapable of sustaining power and that his radical Marxist policies would cause greater instability in the country.

Other reports by the KGB stated that Amin's loyalty toward the Soviet Union was false and that he was an American spy. As such, they needed to replace him with a more pro-Soviet leader who would gain popular support in Afghanistan, Grinevsky wrote.

Amin was in power for 104 days before he was assassinated by KGB agents wearing uniforms of the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee, according to the CIA document, "Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan".

Soviet entry and the resistance
The Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty signed in December 1978 by Amin permitted military assistance and advice to Afghanistan if requested.

Citing the treaty and with the aim of solidifying an ally in Asia, Soviet ground forces took control of Afghanistan in December 1979 and appointed as head of state, former deputy prime minister and leader of the Parcham faction of the PDPA, Kamal Barbak.

In an effort to resist the Soviet occupation and the spread of Marxist ideology to Afghanistan, the United States - then at the height of a nuclear arms race with the Soviets and fearing a southward movement toward the oil-rich Persian Gulf - soon partnered with Pakistani intelligence to recruit and train guerilla fighters, known as the Mujahadeen, who could put up a resistance against the Soviet army.

Both parties "overestimated the threat posed by the other superpower in Afghanistan," Rubin told CNN in March 1999.

The resistance was a success. By the early 1980s various Mujahadeen groups were fighting against Soviet forces and pro-Soviet Afghan government troops.

The United States' donation of anti-aircraft missiles to the Mujahadeen fighters caused major losses to Soviet aircraft and troops.

The United States also expressed its opposition to the Soviet occupation by boycotting the Olympics in Moscow in 1980.

Two years later, the U.N. General Assembly called for withdrawal of Soviet forces.

By November 1986, amid continuing hostilities between the Mujahadeen and Soviet forces, Barbak was ousted as prime minister by the Soviets for ineffectiveness and replaced by the former chief of the Afghan Secret Police, Mohammad Najibullah.

But Najibullah also was unable to control the Mujahadeen, and when the Geneva Accords, overseen by the United Nations and guaranteed by the United States and the Soviet Union, were signed in April 1988, they effectively ended the war.

The treaty, signed by the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, outlined a policy of non-interference and contained a timeline for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The Soviets began withdrawing from Afghanistan in May 1988 and were gone by February 1989.

The Afghan civil war
Despite the Geneva Accords and the withdrawal of Soviet forces, civil war continued in Afghanistan as the Mujahadeen continued to fight the government of Soviet-backed Najibullah.

The resistance ousted Najibullah in 1992 and installed the Taliban government whose hard-line policies ended the fighting.

The 10-year civil war in Afghanistan caused a drain on the country's economy and led many Afghans to flee to neighboring Pakistan, where many remain in 2006.

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After World War II, as both the United States and the Soviet Union competed for global power, Afghanistan increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for support after the United States established military ties with Pakistan in 1954, according to an October 2001 report from Human Rights Watch.

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What does this survey of the Afghan people tell you??

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Beriefly shows how islam is related to the other two monotheisitic faiths and books sent by GOD, ALLAH. If you are interested in reading The Holy Quran translated in to English i recommend a book called "The Meaning Of The Holy Quran" by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, published by Amana Publications.

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Similarities Between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism

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Similarities Between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism

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Islam, Christianity, Judaism: More in Common Than You Think!

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Explanation of the Muslim Holy Time of Ramadan and Eid

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Explanation of the Muslim Holy Time of Ramadan and Eid

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EID MUBARAK | Truth and Reason of Eid al-Fitr

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Hazaras and Pashtuns: Afghanistan's ethnnicities

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Hazaras and Pashtuns: Afghanistan's ethnnicities

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(the book centers mainly around males, but it this video will show how strict the Taliban was.

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What’s Life Really Like For Women In Afghanistan?

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How the Taliban got started. Follow me below Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/RawSanity Tumblr: http://rawsanity.tumblr.com/ . . Comments disabled because the new comment system SUCKS!

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Kite Fighting (in general) This video is from Brazil

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Kite Fighting (in general) This video is from Brazil

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Kite Fight | Op-Docs | The New York Times

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Look particularly at what this handout notes about the Pastuns and the Hazaras. Which group is higher on the social ladder in Afghanistan?

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The setting changes drastically as the years pass with the influence of the Taliban. Look through these dates and see how they correspond with moments in our protagonists life.

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The lynching of a woman wrongly accused of burning a Koran in Kabul provokes widespread revulsion and criticism of hard-line clerics. Police face accusations of doing too little to save her. The incident leads to widespread protests against the treatment of women. Four men are later convicted of murder.

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The lynching of a woman wrongly accused of burning a Koran in Kabul provokes widespread revulsion and criticism of hard-line clerics. Police face accusations of doing too little to save her. The incident leads to widespread protests against the treatment of women. Four men are later convicted of murder.

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One of the characters you will meet in this text is described as having a harelip or as it is commonly known today, a cleft palate. This visual is to help readers develop a stronger sense of what this looks like and why it might lead the character to be ``````````````````````````````````````````````.

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Afghanistan Regional Map - Worldatlas.com

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Located in southern Asia, north and west of Pakistan and east of Iran, Afghanistan has a 5,987.00 km border with China (91 km), Iran (921 km), Pakistan (2,670 km), Tajikistan (1,357 km), Turkmenistan (804 km) and Uzbekistan (144 km).