Life as a Hazara

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 Stern May 21 2013, 10:00 AM ET

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.

The moment you leave the country, you are illegal. So you are sitting in a parking lot watching your people die, because even though you haven't chosen sides in this civil war, you've been assigned one.

Many of you escape, but millions of you don't. So many of your people are killed that you believe fewer than half survived. Even statues that look like you are attacked.
For the next century, those of you who survive are relegated to the bottom rungs of society. The king has made it difficult for your people to gain admission to university and places a ceiling on the rank you can achieve in the military. Later, a group that calls itself The Students, or the Taliban, will take over the country and declare it every Afghan's duty to kill your people.
Imagine, though, that you are one of the lucky ones, and you escape before the king or The Students can get you. You go to a country next door.
Country #2
Iran is a country where, mercifully, everyone is the same religion as you -- Shia. You think you will be welcomed there. There, you are still an ethnic minority, but you are no longer a religious one.
Then there is a revolution, and then a war, and then the ending of a war. People emerge from the tumult and remember that their economy is not very good. There are sanctions. And your people, the different-lookers, are the target of most of the rage. There are not enough jobs for everyone, so why should your people get to take them?
You are not the only immigrants, but you are immigrants people can see are immigrants just by looking. In your country of refuge, you are now an enemy of the people.
You must leave again.
Country #3
Some of you go to Iraq. There, Shias are not in power, but at least there are many of them. Plus, there are important Shia sites in Iraq, so while you feel physically alien, you can make-believe you are spiritually home. Iraq has a powerful and fearsome dictator, but no matter; you are safe.
Until you are no longer safe. The dictator embarks on a foolish war and becomes an enemy of peace, a cancer in the region. Iraq is a pariah state and its dictator a paranoid man who fears that those who aren't like him will soon betray him. He hates Iran, and knows your people were there. And even though you were driven from Iran, you are spying for them, the dictator thinks.
You must leave again.
Country #4
In Syria the situation is reversed -- there are far more Sunnis than Shias, but the Alawites, a kind of Shia, are in power.
You find homes near a shrine, and you settle again. Finally you are safe and free, even though you are four countries from your own and have no papers so you cannot leave.
Then a popular uprising envelops the region and the president of this new land watches heads of state fall all around him. He resolves to stay. He cracks down on those opposing him; he is merciless and decisive. He is killing militants and people suspected of being militants. Soon he is killing so many civilians it is hard to believe he is not killing civilians on purpose.
It is a terrible thing you are seeing, but that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that the president doing all this killing belongs to your religion. The people dying are the Sunnis.
The Sunnis are angry, traumatized, and full of fire. They have seen the bodies of their loved ones broke open, and when they look up from the carnage, they see you, the different-lookers. The people who believe like he believes, the man behind the slaughter.
The victims think: You like this evil man. His family let you live in this country, so surely, you are helping him. You are providing him information. Or maybe you're not now, but soon you will. And so some of the victims arrive at your doorstep to drive you from your home.
There are about 1,000 of you left. You've now been kicked out of your houses, you live in a parking lot next to a shrine, and you are watching mortar rounds fall closer and closer to your family.
And then you're watching mortar rounds hit your family. You are watching your people die in a fourth country. You want to flee, but you can't. You don't have papers, remember? The moment you leave the country, you are illegal.
So you are sitting in a parking lot watching your people die, because even though you haven't chosen sides in this civil war, you've been assigned one.

Residents from the Hazara community pray as they visit their relatives' graves in Quetta, Pakistan on March 1, 2013. (Naseer Ahmed/Reuters)

You are Hazara. Your name actually means "thousand," and you are reliving your own founding myth. You look Asian because your ancestors in Afghanistan were Buddhist pilgrims, or because you descended from Genghis Khan, or both -- this is a contested historical point.
You are Muslim, but you are Shia. What this means is that in Afghanistan, you believed in the right God, but the wrong way. In Iran you believed the right way, but looked wrong. In Iraq, and now in Syria, you were wrong in both ways.
You have never been too comfortable in the places you live because you've always looked different. And you have always been under suspicion because you believe differently. Those of you with features mild enough to pass as other ethnicities often try to.
But now you are trapped. You've moved west and west and now if you moved any further west you'd be in the Mediterranean Sea. You have survived a massacre in Afghanistan, a revolution in Iran, a tyrant in Iraq, and now, a civil war in Syria. You have always been the first to suffer, but you've always been able to go a little further west. Now you can't.

Daughter of the soil
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Malala Yousafzai is a true daughter of the soil. She has risked life and limb to promote the cause of education, the cause of women, the cause of children, the cause of non-violence, the cause of democratic freedoms, the cause of universal human rights. We should laud her brave efforts. Instead, some misguided Pakistanis are condemning her as an "agent" of the West.

Much of the hostility stems from two factors: a distorted image of the Taliban as some sort of anti-imperialist Islamic warriors, and the anti-American public rage in the country. Therefore, anyone who opposes the Taliban in any way, especially from a Western platform, is seen as an American-stooge or CIA agent. The irony is that many who hate Malala's "success" - she is a candidate for the Nobel Peace prize - would give an arm and a leg to be part of the "American Dream".

Several conspiracy theories are rife. According to one, the Malala "drama" was staged by the Pakistan Army to justify an operation against the TTP, This is absurd: the Pakistan army has been conducting continuous operations in Swat and Waziristan since 2007 and has lost over 3000 soldiers to the terrorists. According to another, the CIA staged the incident to justify renewed drone strikes. Ridiculous. The US has been raining Hellfire missiles from drones on the Taliban since 2004 and President Obama has announced drone strikes as an integral element of US counter-terrorism strategy for the next decade. Neither the CIA nor the ISI need to hide behind little Malala's skirts to justify their war against terrorism. Their own death toll at the hands of the Taliban is sufficient to spur them on.

Some powerful vested interests have also helped spin such conspiracy theories. Maulana Fazal ur Rehman is mortally scared of the TTP. He desperately wants a peace deal with them. So he is anti-Malala because she is a symbol of resistance to the Taliban. Raheela Qazi of the Jamaat-e-Islami has gone so far as to fabricate "facts" - a picture of Malala with the ex-Af-Pak US envoy Richard Holbrooke taken in Pakistan several years ago cites Malala as hobnobbing with "US military authority" (who will point to pictures of Qazi Hussain Ahmed and Munawar Hassan with similar US "military authorities"?).

It is also conveniently forgotten that Malala was a national heroine much before she caught the attention of the global community at the UN. Several Pakistani TV channels and papers had already lionized her for fighting the right causes. Indeed, that is precisely why the TTP sought to silence her, much like it did several journalists who tried to expose their criminal and barbaric ways. If she had died, she would have been counted as no more than a number among the forgotten 40,000 victims of TTP terrorism. But in defying death, she has become an icon for worthy universal causes like education and the rights of children. At home she was a virtuous girl who evoked public revulsion against the TTP in the same manner as the video of the anonymous woman who was publicly whipped by them in Swat several years ago. Abroad, the international community gave her a standing ovation because she symbolized the spirit behind the UN's charter of universal human rights and non-violence. Her heroes - Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi - are global icons of peace, truth and reconciliation. The UN doesn't need reminding by Malala that the TTP and Al-Qaeda are terrorists.

Some people ask why Malala, rather than anyone else from among the hundreds of female victims of the TTP, is a darling of liberals and democrats at home and abroad. The answer is simple: Malala has been bravely, consistently and publicly in the forefront of the struggle for children's rights and democratic freedoms in Swat. No other name except hers came to mind in this context before she was attacked. And when she was fighting for her life, it was natural for the media at home and abroad to focus on her and elevate her to a status that is larger than life.

Indeed, it was the Pakistan government and military that decided she should be moved swiftly to a hospital in the UK for treatment. Circumstances rather than any conspiracy compelled this decision: the Pakistan military has an existing arrangement with Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham from where some doctors were already visiting Pakistan and volunteered to treat Malala in their facility. Newspaper reports stress the fact that Malala's family only agreed to go abroad after President Asif Zardari insisted on it and ordered the Pakistan High Commission to give a sustenance job to Malala's father.

Malala Yusufzai is a heroine because of her many qualities of spirit, courage, eloquence and simplicity. Above all that, she stands and speaks for the finest human rights and freedoms of civilization. We should salute her out of a sense of shared values and pride instead of berating her out of self-loathing, envy or rage.