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Ethnic violence has been present in Afghanistan for hundreds of years. As a geographically fragmented state, Afghanistan is separated into as many as 14 ethnic groups that have historically faced divisions that devolved into violence. This conflict reached its culminating point in the 1990s with the rise of the Taliban and the genocide of a number of the country's ethnic groups.
There are 14 nationally recognized [1] ethnic groups in Afghanistan, including Tajiks, Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbeks and others who make up less than 2% each. [2] The most recent figures on the ethnic affiliations come from a survey conducted by the Asia Foundation in 2014. According to the representative survey, 43% of the population identifies as Pashtun, 27% as Tajik, 15% as Hazara, 8% as Uzbek, 2% as Turkmen, 2% as Aimaq, 1% as Baloch, 1% as Nuristani, and 1% as Pashaye. [3]
Afghanistan's ethnic groups are, for the most part, separated into 4 distinct zones of the country. These zones are referred to as Herat, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Kandahar. The country's mountainous terrain, rivers, and lack of infrastructure limit communication and travel between these zones which reinforces existing divides between major ethnic groups. [4]
Abdul Rahman Kahn was the Amir of Afghanistan between 1880 and 1901. During this time, the historic ethnic majority held by the Pashtuns fluctuated greatly. The number of Pashtuns decreased in 1893 after Rahman ceded Pashtun held areas to British India. However, the Pashtun population soon returned to higher numbers when the Emir resettled many of the group into the country's north. [1]
In the 1880s and 1890s, Abdul Rahman Khan fought for the removal of Hazaras from the country, even going so far as to order their murders. [5] During this time, the Hazaras were set apart from Afghanistan's other ethnic groups due to their status as Shia rather than Sunni Muslims. [5] As a Sunni Muslim and a member of the Pashtun majority, Abdul Rahman Kahn encouraged violence against the Hazaras. [5]
This genocide of the Hazaras was also perpetrated by Pashtun religious leaders. Members of the Pashtun group were told that they would likely be rewarded by Allah if they participated in this violence towards the Hazaras. [6]
During this period of conflict, around 60% of Afghanistan's Hazaras were killed and even more were forced to migrate into surrounding countries. [7]
During this time, the Pashtuns sought the creation of an independent Pashtunistan that was separate from Afghanistan. This hypothetical state was intended to exist along the Durand Line, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to unite Pashtuns living in both states. [8] This issue and others saw political groups in Afghanistan increasingly forming along ethnic lines. [1] For example, Pashtun nationalists banded together to form Afghan Millat, a political party that fought for the creation of Pashtunistan. [1]
In 1973, Muhammad Daoud came into power as the president of Afghanistan. [9] Though he is considered to be an authoritarian leader, he declared Afghanistan to be a republic during his rule. [9]
1978 saw the spawning of the Saur Revolution. [1] This period of turmoil involved a coup backed by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) taking control of the government until 1992. [10] On April 27, 1978, perpetrators of the revolution assassinated Daud and took control of the government. [9]
The coup is believed to have been made up of Marxists/Leftists who resented the then government's treatment of their ideology. The tipping point for Afghanistan leftists was the assassination of Mir Akbar Khaibar on April 17, 1978. [9] [11] Mir Akbar Khaibar was a leader within the PDPA and the party's other leaders were arrested shortly after his murder. [9]
Scholars are divided over the possibility of Soviet involvement in the coup.
After the Pashtun Taliban rose to power in the mid-1990s, they began committing atrocities against their opponents, the Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks. [12] In 1998, the United Nations accused the Taliban of denying emergency food by the UN's World Food Program to 160,000 hungry and starving people (most of whom were Hazaras and Tajiks) "for political and military reasons". [13] The UN stated that the Taliban were starving people for their military agenda and using humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war. [14] The colonization of Pashtuns and Pashtun nationalism was part of the ideology of the Taliban. [15]
The Northern Alliance was formed in opposition to the Taliban and was composed of Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks. [7] [16] The group was supported by a number of countries, such as the United States, Iran, Russia, and India. [16] In 1997, the Northern Alliance killed 2,000 members of the Taliban that they had captured in conflicts between the two groups. [7]
On August 8, 1998, the Taliban launched an attack on Mazar-i Sharif. Once in control, the Taliban began to kill people based on their ethnicity, especially Hazaras and Uzbeks. Men, women and children were hunted by Taliban forces as a result of the 1500-3000 Taliban fighters executed by the Uzbek Junbish-i Milli militia. [17] This act of ethnic cleansing left an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 dead. [18] [19]
In 2001, Human Rights Watch voiced the fear that ethnic violence in Afghanistan was likely to increase due to the escalation of conflict between factions. [20] Thousands of Pashtun people became refugees as they fled Uzbek Junbish-i Milli troops, some of whom were reported as looting, raping and kidnapping. These crimes were said to have occurred when the troops were disarming Pashtuns accused of being former Taliban supporters in northern Afghanistan during the early stages of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) which removed the dominantly Pashtun Taliban from power. [21]
In 2010 Afghan President Hamid Karzai set up a panel to investigate continuing ethnic violence as he believes it is hampering the military efforts to contain the Taliban insurgency. [22]
Afghans or Afghan people are nationals or citizens of Afghanistan, or people with ancestry from there. Afghanistan is made up of various ethnicities, of which Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks are the largest. The two main languages spoken by Afghans are Pashto and Dari, and many Afghans are bilingual in speaking fluent Pashto and Dari.
The Hazaras are an ethnic group and a principal component of the population of Afghanistan, native to, and primarily residing in the Hazaristan region in central Afghanistan and the northern regions of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan. They are one of the largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and a significant minority group in Pakistan, mostly in Quetta, and as well as in Iran. They speak the Dari and Hazaragi dialects of Persian. Dari is one of the two official languages in Afghanistan.
Mohammad Daoud Khan, also romanized as Daud Khan or Dawood Khan, was an Afghan statesman who served as prime minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and, as leader of the 1973 Afghan coup d'état which overthrew the monarchy, served as the first president of Afghanistan from 1973 until his assassination.
Pashtunistan is a historical region located on the Iranian Plateau, inhabited by the indigenous Pashtun people of southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan in South-Central Asia, wherein Pashtun culture, the Pashto language, and Pashtun identity have been based. Alternative names historically used for the region include Pashtūnkhwā (پښتونخوا), Pakhtūnistān, Pathānistān, or simply the Pashtun Belt. Pashtunistan borders the geographical regions of Turkestan to the north, Kashmir to the northeast, Punjab to the east, Balochistan to the south and Iran to the west.
The population of Afghanistan is around 41 million as of 2023. The nation is composed of a multi-ethnic and multilingual society, reflecting its location astride historic trade and invasion routes between Central Asia, South Asia, and Western Asia. Ethnic groups in the country include Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbeks as well as smaller groups such as Nuristanis, Aimaq, Turkmen, Baloch and some others which are less known. Together they make up the contemporary Afghan people.
The 1998 Mazar-i-Sharif massacre took place in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan in 1998, and it involved at least 2,000 victims who were massacred by the Taliban, with Human Rights Watch estimating that the actual number of victims may be much higher.
Balkh is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the north of the country. It is divided into 15 districts and has a population of about 1,509,183, which is multi-ethnic and mostly a Persian-speaking society. The city of Mazar-i-Sharif serves as the capital of the province. The Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport and Camp Marmal sit on the eastern edge of Mazar-i-Sharif.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a military alliance of groups that operated between late 1996 to 2001 after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) took over Kabul. The United Front was originally assembled by key leaders of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, particularly president Burhanuddin Rabbani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Shah Massoud. Initially it included mostly Tajiks but by 2000, leaders of other ethnic groups had joined the Northern Alliance. This included Karim Khalili, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Abdullah Abdullah, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Abdul Qadir, Asif Mohseni, Amrullah Saleh and others.
Abdul Haq was an Afghan mujahideen commander who fought against the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, the de facto Afghan government in the 1980s. He was killed by the Taliban in October 2001 while trying to create a popular uprising against the Taliban in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11th attacks.
The 1992–1996 Afghan Civil War took place between 28 April 1992—the date a new interim Afghan government was supposed to replace the Republic of Afghanistan of President Mohammad Najibullah—and the Taliban's conquest of Kabul establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996.
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil War that had started in 1989, and also part of the war in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
Afghanistan is a multiethnic and mostly tribal society. The population of the country consists of numerous ethnolinguistic groups: mainly the Pashtun, Tajik (~25%), Hazara (~10%) and Uzbek people (~10%), and minorities of Aimaq, Turkmen, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Kurds, Gujjar, Arab, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Sadat and others (~5%). Altogether they make up the Afghan people.
The National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, sometimes called simply Junbish, is a Turkic political party in Afghanistan. Its founder is Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum who created it in 1992 made from his loyalist remnants from the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan's communist regime.
The Battles of Mazar-i-Sharif were a part of the Afghan Civil War and took place in 1997 and 1998 between the forces of Abdul Malik Pahlawan and his Hazara allies, Junbish-e Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan, and the Taliban.
The Hazaras have long been the subjects of persecution in Afghanistan. The Hazaras are mostly from Afghanistan, primarily from the central regions of Afghanistan, known as Hazarajat. Significant communities of Hazara people also live in Quetta, Pakistan, and in Mashad, Iran, as part of the Hazara and Afghan diasporas.
The National Front of Afghanistan, or Jabh-e Melli, was established in late 2011 by Ahmad Zia Massoud, Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq and Abdul Rashid Dostum. It was generally regarded as a reformation of parts of the military wing which once existed of the United Front which with U.S. air support removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in late 2001. The National Front strongly opposed a return of the Taliban to power but failed to keep them in check. It retains only a small military apparatus today. The chairman of the National Front is Ahmad Zia Massoud, the younger brother of the Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud who was assassinated two days before the September 11 attacks in 2001. It is unclear if it is still in operation, as Afghanistan's Republican government has collapsed.
Anti-Pashtun sentiment refers to dislike and hostility towards Pashtuns, Pashtun culture, or the Pashto language. This includes fear as well as resentment exhibited by non-Pashtun ethnic majorities who have suffered decades of persecution at the hands of Pashtuns, including disappearances, murder, slavery, Pashtunization, and genocide, especially the Hazaras.
The Tehran Eight was a political union of Shi'a Afghan Mujahideen, mainly of the Hazara ethnic group, during the Soviet–Afghan War. They were supported by Iran, hence the name Tehran Eight.
Starting in the 1880s, various Pashtun-dominated governments of Afghanistan have pursued policies, called Pashtunization, aimed towards settling more ethnic Pashtuns in the northern region of Afghanistan.
The following is an outline of the series of events that led up the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021).
