Afghan United Association of SA, an active member of the Australian
Hazara Federation in South Australia took part in Australia day parade in
Adelaide on 26 January 2013.

Hundreds of community groups from different cultural
background attended to the parade and marched from Victoria SQ to Elder Park. Each
group did their best to show off their custom, music and art.

Thousands of people, including his Excellency the governor
of South Australia, lieutenant governor of SA and chairman of Multicultural SA,
Minister for cultural affair of SA and many other MPs and VIPs sat alongside the
parade distance to watch different groups marching to celebrate Australia Day.

Vast majority of the Afghani community group dressed
according to their custom in Afghanistan; in particular the ladies and girls
who were dressed with their pure Hazaragi custom.

At the end of the Australia day march, three groups elected
winners for best music, custom and art. The Scotland group won award for best
music, chines group awarded for art and being creative and the Afghan
community group won award for best custom. The award for best custom was
granted to design, colure, broidery and needlework of Hazaragi women dress.

Thanks to Mr Nader Nader for his creation of a beautiful statue
of a camel to remark the significant contributions of Afghan cameleers to
Australian society.

Increased attacks on the Hazara community in Pakistan have raised questions about the nature of these crimes. Some label them as a wave of sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis while others warn of a systematic targeting of this ethnic minority. Why are the Hazara targeted? And what is the Pakistani government doing to protect minority groups?

In this episode of The Stream, we speak to Ahmad Shuja, a writer for UN Dispatch; Major Nadir Ali, Senior Leader of the Hazara tribe in Quetta; and Abdul Khaliq Hazara, Chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party.

What do you think? Why is the Hazara community being targeted in Pakistan? Send us your thoughts and comments on Facebook or Twitter using hashtag #AJStream.

Following recent attacks on the Hazara community, people around the world have protested targeted killings of the Hazara people. Over the years, the Hazara have faced hardship and brutal displacement. Below is a video of a protest by Hazari women.

broadcast by al jazeera

Initially, I was amazed at the media attention Syed Ibrar Hussain’s recent assassination in Quetta received, but I could rationalize it quickly – it wasn’t Syed Ibrar Hussain (or Ibrar Agha as he was known) who was being eulogized and mourned.

Syed Ibrar Hussain’s murder was mentioned in the media – unlike hundreds of other innocent victims from his sect – because he had won a few medals ‘for Pakistan’, as it is said. While he was an equally lesser-Muslim, he was relatively more-Pakistani than the rest of the Shia-Hazara people, and that is why his death wasn’t (couldn’t have been) ignored with similar disregard and apathy. Unfortunately, it was the curse of Patriotism that pinched people to remember him in his death, not a humanistic pang, not even guilt.

The Shias of Quetta (predominantly Hazara and henceforth mostly referred so) have been at the receiving end of violence for a decade now. Not surprisingly, their miseries have remained untold and unknown. The culprits are at large, emboldened and encouraged by either State’s connivance or its indifference. Even Hazaras themselves, despite history’s testimony, cannot comfortably discern the silhouette of their elusive enemy. Their wild guesses and convenient justifications fail their own cause, and understandably so. Hazaras are common people, with the typical inadequacies of the general masses. In naivety, they can even partially be their own enemies as all human beings are, but they cannot be held responsible for their sufferings. In fact, their plight raises several difficult questions for the State of Pakistan.

Pakistan is a strange country. It approaches its citizens like an insecure and doubtful spouse, and the Shia-Hazaras do not conform to the ideal Pakistani prototype. They have to be doubted; they have to be beaten; they have to be changed. They share their religion with Iran, which is otherwise a ‘brotherly Islamic neighbor’, and their race with one of the factions in the Northern Alliance, the ‘Indian agents in Pakistan’s fifth province’. The Hazaras, most of whom aren’t even cognizant of their crimes, therefore need to be bludgeoned and battered till they categorically say: “we are elephants”. Diversity is aberration in Pakistan, and any aberration is a threat.

The Hazaras, who have lived in Quetta for over a century now, were the blue-eyed boys of the State after partition of India, but fate cheated them when several events such as the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution, and Zia-ul-Haq’s ascension to power coincided. The general political and social environment in Pakistan was beginning to change by then with religion taking the center stage in the public sphere.

During the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Hazaras in Quetta could be loosely divided into several groups: the Iranian influenced religious people, the nationalists, the communists and the majority of the benign common people who loved their religion, loved their country, and were just like all other ‘ordinary people’.

During the 1980s, the paranoid and always-threatened state of Pakistan developed a duplicitous relationship with the Hazaras of Quetta. Religion was considered the immediate threat and Hazaras therefore needed to be de-Iranized. While secularism (let alone its more acute variants) has otherwise been a taboo in Pakistan, when it came to the Hazaras, the Deep State in Pakistan supported the secular nationalist and even Communist groups among Hazaras against the religious elements who were pejoratively called “Khomeini’s Children/Orphans”. The state successfully used all its mind and muscle to rid Quetta of the Iranian influence and bury its remains in the Hazara Graveyard along with Ibrahim Hazara (a nationalist student leader whose death was used as pretense to rid Quetta of the Imamia Students Organization (ISO)).

But duplicity isn’t the only trait the Deep State is known for, much to its chagrin, it is also known for glaring stupidity. The same religious elements were resurrected later due to stupidity, when the State along with its strategic assets got back to the Hazaras with vengeance a decade and a half later.

After 9/11, when hordes of ‘strategic assets’ in Afghanistan were hushed back into Pakistan, many of them found cozy sanctuaries in Northern Balochistan. The Hazaras in Afghanistan, being a part of the Northern Alliance, had come into power in Kabul, but many Hazaras still lived in Pakistan. The Deep State didn’t see Hazaras as Pakistanis anymore, rather as brethren of the Hazaras in power in Afghanistan. And this is quite typical of the Pakistani mindset. It sees to the masses as subjects, not citizens, and sanctions rights discretionally, not constitutionally.

The frustrated ‘strategic assets’ now back in Pakistan and waiting for another go in Afghanistan (for which they had to wait till 2014) needed punch bags, and the state provided for that in the form of Shia-Hazaras in Quetta, and Shias elsewhere. Killing must be an addictive habit, especially if it’s a religious one. For the state itself, the Hazaras of Quetta were hostages it could use for bargaining with the Northern Alliance, and for its unholy children, they were toys to remain temporarily occupied with. But this ‘engagement’ was not-so-temporary.

In all the incidents of violence against the Shias in Quetta (which also includes ethnicities other than Hazaras), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility, while there have been instances of Jaish-e-Muhammad and Jundallah cadre too being involved in this systemic genocide. This ‘unity’ isn’t much surprising knowing that all the militant outfits in Afghanistan belonging to various ethnicities and countries, with military and financial support from Pakistan Army, joined hands in the attack on Mazar-i-Sharif and ethnic cleansing of Hazaras.

During the initial years, individual or group target killings took place in either secluded places, or a few areas known to be militant sanctuaries. But for a while now, every part of the city seems to be infested with militants. Leaflets of edicts declaring Shias as apostates and threatening their genocide have been scattered and dropped in houses in an area predominantly Shia-Hazara, and far from areas earlier considered as militant zones.

It is ironical that the Shias of Quetta don’t quite know those who’ve been targeting them. The Deep State, very conveniently, has convinced many of them that they’re subject to an international conspiracy and are being targeted at the behest of US, India and Israel. Some blame the Balochs for the killings, while others put the onus on the Pashtoons who they believe want to grab their lands. The truth is lost somewhere behind the smokescreen of lies.

Today, a sinister dark prevails in the gloomy city as an eerie wind blows. The Hazaras have been confined to two ghetto-like areas while every member of the community anticipates death. Life has come to a standstill and death swaggers in the streets. Kids hesitate going to schools, men are apprehensive to leave their homes for work, and women do not want their loved ones to step out of the house unnecessarily. But the same people attend religious gatherings and processions in scores, yet the state is bent upon reinforcing its erroneous policies.

In the meanwhile, the pompous state watches its boys (some delinquent, others still obedient) play in the periphery with things that don’t really matter, and awaits developments in Afghanistan. Till then  it wants the Hazaras to serve the interest of the state by keeping the boys busy and satiated, and also atone their sins in the course. This is a service to the cause of the nation and a national duty. After all, Pakistan Comes First!

By Hadi Zaher

Do our politicians have any idea why asylum seekers pack up their lives and flee? Hadi Zaher on the increasingly violent situation facing Hazaras in Pakistan

An old Persian saying goes like this: as the lamb worries about its life, the butcher worries about the fat and meat. As the federal Government and the Opposition worry about destroying the people smugglers’ business model and stopping the boats, asylum seekers and the communities they hail from are worried about their lives.

Quetta is a small city located in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, a couple of hours by road from the Afghan border. It is the administrative centre of Baluchistan and a second home to hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees who have settled in the city following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent outbreak of the Afghan civil war. Among them are tens of thousands of Hazaras, adding to an older community that arrived there a century earlier after the invasion of the Hazara homeland in Afghanistan’s central highlands by Amir Abdur Rehman, known in the British Empire as Afghanistan’s Iron Amir.

The Hazaras adhere to the Shiite branch of Islam, distinct from the Sunni Islam, by far Islam’s largest sect.

Quetta’s Hazara population is divided between two township slums in the east and west of the city. Many in the community own small shops, others depend on remittances from Iran, the Gulf States, Europe and Australia. Most families are divided across many political borders with relatives living in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Some of these people live legally, some have been able to obtain UNHCR refugee cards, but most have to make regular payments to local authorities and the police to avoid incarceration and deportation. This community has become the target of killings and massacres and its members have been forced to flee for their lives.

“We have lost more than 500 people in sectarian attacks on our community. Every ethnic Hazara family has been affected, directly or indirectly, by the violence against them. Everybody has lost a relative or a friend or a neighbour,” Mirza Azad, a member of a local NGO Tanzeem Nasle-Nau Hazara, told Pakistan’s English daily paper, Dawn, in June.

In the three months since then, things have gotten worse for the Hazara community. Day after day armed assailants kill Hazara businessmen, politicians, laborers, clerics, vegetable vendors, students, children playing soccer and so on. Over the weekend, armed assailants stopped a van full of passengers on the outskirts of Quetta, segregated Hazara passengers and summarily executed three men and injured three others including a child.

This incident came mere four days after a passenger coach travelling to Iran was stopped outside Quetta. Only Hazara passengers taken out, lined up and shot. At least 26 were killed and six injured with the youngest victim only 13 years old.

Two weeks earlier, as Muslims around the world celebrated the end of Ramadan, Quetta’s Hazara community were collecting their dead as a car bomb struck Eid prayers, killing at least 12 people and injuring 13 others. In late July armed assailants on motorbikes attacked a passenger van on one of Quetta’s busiest roads killing at least 11 Hazara men and women. On 30 May this year, armed assailants arriving in two cars attacked an early morning game of soccer that killed eight people and injured 15, mostly youngsters out for a morning game. The targeted killing of Hazaras has now spread to other Pakistani cities.

The list of attacks specifically targeting the Hazara community is long. Members of the community, easily distinguishable for their Mongoloid features, bear the brunt of Pakistan’s sectarian violence. Almost every time the killers have got away and each time the Taliban affiliated Pakistan-based sectarian outfit Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ) has claimed responsibility.

LeJ has a declared agenda to rid Pakistan of all Shiites, who they consider heretics and liable to be killed. Leaflets distributed by the group have declared Hazaras and Shiite Muslims to be “infidels”. Followers are urged to take “extreme steps”, much like ones carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In very few cases have Pakistani authorities been able to make arrests. Where arrests have been made conviction rates have been very low. Two leaders of the LeJ were able to escape from Quetta’s maximum security prison in 2008. Earlier this month Pakistan’s High Court released a leader of a banned anti-Shiite organisation, who continues to organise public rallies and preach hatred towards the Shiite minority. With a lack of basic security and suspected collusion by the authorities, Hazaras feel cut off and besieged.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, Hazaras continue to face discrimination at the hands of the Taliban-led Islamist insurgency as well as elements of the government. Hazara towns and villages have been targeted by government-backed armed nomads, passengers have been kidnapped, looted and slaughtered. Hazara communities across the country remain at the mercy of Taliban and other Islamic extremist outfits who have in recent years burned down villages, closed and torched schools and forced entire communities into exile.

Earlier this week, three Hazara passengers were taken off a van in Ghazni, slaughtered and their bodies thrown on to the road. The Taliban has blockaded Hazara districts of Jaghori and Qarabagh from the country’s main highway and the main cities, leaving the communities in a state of effective siege for the better part of the last three years.

Armed incursions into Hazara villages in Ghazni’s Nahur district earlier this year left 26 villages burned and dozens of villagers killed. This followed the burning of dozens of villages in the same area and the forced relocation of hundreds of villages in the neighboring Wardak province mere weeks earlier.

Hazara communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan fear a return to the dark days of the 1990s and 2000/2001 when the Taliban set out to massacre entire Hazara towns and villages in central Afghanistan and the north. Afghanistan’s central government is weak and itself insecure. There’s similar government incapacity in Pakistan. Under such conditions, communities at risk have no one to look to for security — and some flee to Western countries such as Australia in search of safety and security.

The Australian Government and Opposition appear to be in a race to the bottom to decide who can treat asylum seekers more harshly. What gets left out of the debate too often is the fact that these asylum seekers are, undeniably, in many cases escaping certain death.

Instead of changing Australian immigrations laws to send asylum seekers offshore, the Government should lead the rest of us in a show of compassion toward people like the Hazaras, who are in desperate need. Australia can and should listen to the stories of these people rather than making them a footnote to a dry, dull and uncompassionate narrative that is currently a feature of the parliamentary Question Time.