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Four Hazaras Killed in a Terror Attack in Pakistan

Shayan — 2017-07-19T20:13:23Z

Four Hazaras including a woman were killed and one other was injured in Mastung District of Balochistan on Wednesday, July 20, 2017.

The incident happened early in the morning around 6:30 AM. A terrorist targeted the vehicle of the Hazara passengers who were traveling from Quetta to Karachi.

The bodies were identified as Rukhshana Bibi, Shulam Sarwar, Muhammad Asif and Murta. It said that all the victims are members of the same family.

Balochistan is one of the most dangerous place for the Hazara community. According to the Pakistan Today, there have been more than 1,400 terror attacks happened against the Hazara community in Quetta during the last 15 years.

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AIHRC: Attacks against Hazaras in Afghanistan

Shayan — 2017-05-30T11:29:36Z

Note: this report is prepared at the official request of Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in response to UN Human Rights Rapporteurs on the situation of the Hazaras in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) is mandated by the Afghan Constitution to promote and protect Human Rights in the country.

According to the Rome Statute, taking hostages and attacks against civilians are in grave violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols. Hence under the Geneva Conventions targeting civilians and taking hostages constitute cases of war crimes. In addition, attacks against civilians are in violation of the International Humanitarian law and human rights law.

Based on the data gathered by AIHRC since 1393 (2013/2014), the Hazaras in Afghanistan have been subject to various forms of violent attacks. More worryingly, the attacks have increased in 1395 (2015/2016) in comparison to previous years. According to AIHRC's assessment, some of these attacks have specifically targeted one particular group based on their ethnicity and religion that is the Shia-Hazaras. While Daesh has claimed responsibility for most of these attacks, still there are attacks that no one has claimed responsibility for them.

AIHCR has constantly responded to these attacks by issuing press statements and have called on the Afghan government to take concrete measures to stop the spread of Islamic radicalization and protect its citizens. Moreover, AIHRC through these press releases has stated that; specifically targeting civilians constitutes war crimes and the perpetrators should be brought to justice. Unfortunately, most of the alleged perpetrators have not been brought to justice.

Despite the target killings of the Hazaras, both the Afghan Government officials as well as the Afghan population have not allowed these attacks to increase ethnic and religious tensions. Furthermore, civil society groups, human rights organizations, victims' families and the Afghan security forces have reiterated that, the attackers want to create ethnic and religious conflict in the country and we should not let that to happen. The leaders of the Afghan National Unity Government have similarly called upon the Afghan people to not allow this attacks further exacerbate ethnic and religious tension in the country.

While the National Unity Government has tried to provide security to religious events including for the Sunnis and Shia's events, still it has not prevented attacks against them completely. It is important to note that prior to the commencement of Shia religious ceremonies, the Afghan Government and the members of this group sat together and discussed better mechanisms on how to protect these ceremonies, yet these efforts have been inadequate at best and attacks took place against Shia and Hazaras.

A short overview of cases in 2015/2016 (1395)

The attacks against the Hazaras increased in the Afghan calendar year 1395 (2015- 2016) compared with the previous year. There were at least five major attacks against the Hazaras in 2015-2016 that killed 156 people and wounding a further 479 civilian. Below are the details of these attacks;

The Deh Mazang Attack

On 23 July 2016, thousands of Kabul residents mostly from the Hazara ethnic minority group were protesting against government plans for a major power project bypassing the Hazara dominated province of Bamiyan when suicide bombers attacked the peaceful march and killed 84 people and injured 283 more. The attack took place at around 3pm at the Deh Mazang Square in Kabul city. After the attack, ISIS claimed responsibility and stated that the Afghan Shia's are one of their targets.

The organizer of this March, the Enlighten Movement accused the government of failing to protect the security of the protesters. The AIHRC's own investigation also indicate that the security forces were too busy protecting the security of the Government institutions while failing to adequately protect the security of the protesters. The Afghan security forces failure to protect the protesters is unacceptable by the AIHRC.

Karte Sakhi attack

On 11 October 2016, on the eve of Ashura, gunmen wearing police uniform attacked the Sakhi Shrine in Karte Sakhi area in Kabul. In this attack, one police officer, 18 civilians including 3 women and a child was killed and a further 58 civilians including 26 women and four children were injured. After the attack the Islamic State and specifically its Khurasan branch claimed responsibility for the attack. The afghan government also released a statement condemning the attack and stated that the perpetrators of this attack are the enemy of peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Balkh district attack

On 12th of October 2016, on the holy day of Ashura, a roadside bomb targeted a Shia procession in Balkh district in Northern Afghanistan killing 14 and wounding 70 civilians. While no group claimed responsibility for the attack, the Afghan Government officials stated that it was the work of Afghanistan's enemies.

Attack on Baqir-ul-olum Mosque

On the 21st of November 2016, Shia mourners were commemorating Arbaeen in the Baqir-ul-ulom mosque located at the Kateb Road in Kabul when a suicde bomber detonated himself among the worshipers killing 32 people including 8 children and injuring 64. Arbaeen is the ritual marking the end of a 40-day mourning period for the 7the century death of Imam Hussain. The attack happened at 12:10 noon when the worshipers had gathered for lunch.

Afghan security forces were heavily criticized for failing to protect the worshipers following the attack. For example, the Second vice President while condemning the attack stated that it is the responsibility of the security forces to protect events particularly religious ones. He further stated that the attack on Baqir-ul-Olum demonstrated the weakness of our defence and security forces and we need to reassess the capabilities of these organs. The Islamic State latter claimed responsibility for the attack and announced that one of its members had carried out the attack.

The Interior Ministry also released a statement saying that it had suspended four officials from the Area 6 police station where the mosque is located. It also convened a special investigation unit team to investigate the attack but the result of this investigation has not made public yet.

Tala Wa Barfak District Attack

On 7th January 2017, when a group of Hazara miners were returning from Tala Wa Barfak district to their home in Dykundi, they were stopped in the Pull E Sher area of Anar Dara while traveling by bus. According to one of the witness who managed to escape from the attack, three armed men wearing mask asked the miners to get out of the bus and lined them up next to the river and shot them. The eyewitness also stated that the attackers said that Shias are not Muslims before firing on them. Consequently, despite the miners' pleas that they are Muslims, the attackers fired at them killing 7 of them, injuring 4 and 5 managed to escape.

While no one has claimed responsibility for this attack, AIHRC's investigation, and after speaking to eyewitnesses reveal that, this attack was carried out by the local Taliban. The local people have told AIHRC investigators that the Taliban has a strong presence in the Tala Wa Barfak District and no one else can carry out such attacks in this area.

The local people, who wanted to remain anonymous privately, told the AIHRC that Qari Meraj, Qari Qutratullah and Qari Musa, Taliban's shadow district governor for Tala Wa Barfak district is the people responsible for this attack. However, no one has been arrested or detained in connection with this attack.

Sar-e-Pull Incident

On June 1st, 2016, 17 Hazaras were taken hostage in Sar-e-pull province by unidentified gunman. While the hostages were released latter, still it showed that hostage taking situations such as this one restricted the freedom to movement of the Hazaras and has put their life at risk.

The Ghor Attack

On October 25, 2016, Taliban stopped a car carrying 5 students from the Hazara ethnic group and took them hostage. The Taliban killed one of the hostages in a very cruel way and released the remaining 4 a week later.

An overview of cases from 1393 and 1394

In the Afghan calendar year 1394 (2015-2016) and 1394 (2014-2105), the Hazaras in Afghanistan came under a lot of attacks that resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries while many more were taken as hostages. While some the hostages were released latter, still other people were brutally killed. The details of hostage taking are as bellow:

Zare District Incident

On 5th September 2015, 13 Hazaras were killed in Zari District in Balkh province when they were traveling by car. Armed men stopped their cars and then took them out of the car before shooting them on the side road. While no group has yet claimed responsibility, the Afghan government blamed the enemy of the Afghan people for the attack. However, the Taliban also released a statement condemning the attack and saying that they did not carry out the attack.

Hostage Taking in Zabul

In February 2015, 31 Hazaras were kidnaped from a bus in Zabul Province, South of Afghanistan when they were traveling from Heart to Kabul. While, 19 of them were freed a few months later, the kidnappers killed 4 of them. However, a further 7 were freed in a government operation.

Beheading of Hostages in Zabul

On September 30, 2015, seven Hazaras including two women and an 8-yearold girl and 4 women were traveling from Jaghuri District towards Kandahar when armed men stopped their car and they were subsequently kidnapped. While the kidnappers released one of the woman and one of the elderly man, they took the rest of the Hazaras with them to Khak Afghan district. Latter it was revealed that the kidnappers were originally from Uzbekistan.

On November 8, 2015, Afghan security forces conducted an operation in a bit to release the hostages however after two days of fighting the kidnappers beheaded the seven hostages including the eight-year-old girl. According to Afghan officials, the kidnappers were IS fighters from Uzbekistan.

The beheading of seven Hazara Hostages was met with waves of national and international condemnation and by Human Rights organizations. The families of the victims and as well as other Kabul resident marched in Kabul city and carried the bodies of the victims on their shoulders. The protesters accused the government of failing to protect civilians and demanded an immediate end to attacks against the Hazaras.

Afghan officials, specifically the President's Office stated that they made repeated attempts to release the hostages but only managed to free 5 of the remaining hostages. However, the hostages themselves dispute this claim. The released hostages claim that the Taliban not Afghan security forces freed them.

The Ghor Attack

In late July 2014, in Ghor Province, armed men stopped two mini buses carrying passengers and after singling out 14 Shia Hazaras, killed them on the roadside. The victims included a newlywed couple, women and children. Ghor provincial authorities blamed the Taliban for the attack but no one has officially claimed responsibility for this attack to this day. However, Qari Rahmatullah, a Taliban commander, was later arrested in connection to this attack. According to some reports Qari Rahmatllah had joined the Islamic State.

Source: Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission

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Challenges Facing Civil Society in Afghanistan

Shayan — 2017-04-20T08:24:07Z

By Zafar Shayan

Afghanistan's modern history is tied with dictatorship, mono-ethnic regimes, and religious tyranny. Individuals and groups, particularly people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds, who criticized regimes or powerful politicians were violently eliminated. On the other hand, the strengthening of the mujahedeen and radical Islamist groups in the last few decades have led to civil war and escalation of religious tyranny more so than ever before. Ethnic exclusiveness and religious radicalism reached its peak under the Taliban regime. Thus, no opportunity remained for intellectual production and the formation of a society based on democratic values.

After the collapse of the Taliban regime, the support of the international community provided an opportunity for civil society discourse. Since then, civil society and human rights groups formed as new phenomenon in Afghanistan. Until now, civil society organizations (CSOs) and activists have made considerable achievements in public awareness and partly monitoring public service. This essay attempts to discuss the problems facing civil society in Afghanistan. Here I have divided the main problems of civil society in three categories: challenges originating from illiteracy and traditional beliefs of the society; violations practiced by the government; and problems that exist in/by CSOs and groups.

Challenges Within Society

Illiteracy is one of the most outstanding destructive legacies of the crisis prompted by decades of war. Afghanistani youth are especially affected as they spent their formative years in an environment of war, filled with violence and deprivation. The people of Afghanistan have not only been deprived of their civil rights; they have secured very little understanding of their civil rights, and on civil society discourse itself. Even amongst the literate people, despite their interest in daily political discussions and using concepts such as citizenship, civil rights, civil society etc., they don't really have a true understanding of the concepts. Therefore, civil society discourse has remained unknown.

Religious individuals and institutions consider civil society harmful to their beliefs and religious affiliations, due to their acceptance of learning ‘absolute truths' they seek to impose on others. They don't hesitate to discredit activists and women's rights groups amongst the religious masses of Afghanistan. They justify discrimination against women through religious arguments, which has been accepted in a society that has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world. Unfortunately, these issues exist within academic institutions as well. During my undergraduate degree at Kabul University, several times I witnessed professors of Islamic subjects labeling activists as promoters of moral corruption; activists are introduced as idlers wasting their time. To exemplify how effective this representation is, a female university student (S.S.) posted on Facebook stating, “unemployed people are civil activists” and in her next post “as the ratio of unemployment is higher among the ethnic Hazara, most of activists are Hazaras”.

Another issue is that level of interest in volunteering is very low. This could be considered a result of poverty (along with traditional and religious ideology). Many educated youth are struggling with life difficulties and some have inevitably migrated. And some of educated youth who have a stake in the government, are conservatives with little interest in volunteering and participating in civic actions. All of these factors have contributed to CSOs not having public support.

Violations Applied by the Government

The freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assemblies are respectively declared in Articles 34, 35, and 36 of Afghanistan's constitution. The government has also promised the international community to respect civil society and civil rights. But these promises have so far remained only on paper and are less observed in practice, or aren't even applied. As Sitiz argues: “The government of Afghanistan doesn't formally recognize civil society as an effective component in its programs.” Instead, it considers CSOs as “political opponents”. According to him, the problem is rooted in the strong presence of ‘yesterday's absolutists' in the face of ‘today's democrats' in the structure of the government. Here the restrictions applied by the government towards civil society is explained in the context of categorization by CIVICUS as violations of the freedoms of association, expression, and peaceful assembly.

First, there are many restrictions applied by the government on the formation and registration of CSOs. The process of registering a non-governmental organization (NGO) is a lengthy procedure and needs cumbersome documents. Issues referring to various departments, register fees, repeatedly requested information, that these offices are only equipped with a number of desks and chairs and – worst of all – obstructions, makes registering NGOs difficult, even sometimes impossible. In 2011, my friends and I registered an NGO in the Ministry of Economy after two months of running and referring to different departments of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Kabul Police HQ, Afghanistan Investment Support Agency and several branches of Customs. Several times we decided to give up registering. These restrictions are being implemented to take the CSOs under control, which is a violation of the freedom of association.

Second, the government resorts to violence against activists and neglects security issues, which is a violation of the freedom of peacefully gathering. For instance, the Human Rights Watch and reporters in Bamyan on 29 August, 2016, during Ghani's visit, reported the repression and detention of activists from the ‘Enlightening Movement'. Further, the government pays little attention to providing security at peaceful gatherings. On 23 July, 2016, a terror attack occurred at a peaceful demonstration in Kabul in which 107 civilians, mostly university students, were killed, and about 500 were wounded, but none of the perpetrators have yet been brought to justice. High officials of the National Security Council (NSC) and National Directorate of Security (NSD) were accused of being involved in the attack, as one of the suicide attackers was released from NSD's prison a few days before. An organizer from the ‘Enlightening Movement' claimed that “we have reliable evidence to prove that the attack on the 23 July peaceful demonstration was organized by the government, particularly high officials in NSC and NSD”. Additionally, activists of this movement in Kabul have been threatened with jail several times and more recently, the government refused to provide security for a gathering that was to be organized by the movement.

Third, the government violates the freedom of expression through strict censorship of media. According to the Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan's media can't cover “sensitive issues – including corruption, land grabbing, violence against women, and human rights abuses.” Journalists must, therefore, resort to self-censorship to minimize the risk to their lives. For instance, the government puts pressure on media not to cover the activities related to the ‘Enlightening Movement'. The movement's only media is online social media (like Facebook and Twitter). However, most Afghanistan people don't have access to the Internet, and thus information dissemination becomes an impossibility amongst most people. This demonstrates that not only does the government discourage freedom of expression, it also is a barrier – along with local militia and terrorist groups.

Problems in CSOs

CSOs suffer incredibly from lack of transparency and lack of skills and capacity amongst their members, and a corrupt CSO cannot criticize a corrupt government. The transparency issues of these organizations depend on the general economic and political conditions of the environment; Afghanistan is always on the list of most corrupt countries in the world. The level of corruption among public and private sectors depend on their level of authority, and some of individuals and entities working in civil society aren't exception to this.

On the other hand, CSOs suffer from financial dependency, which is due to the poor economic situation of the country. The activities of these organizations mostly have depended on international donors. Recently, that the number of international donor agencies has decreased, resulting in an increase of problems for CSOs financing. In response, some civil society groups and organizations are trying to establish connections with politicians and government officials to attract support. In this way, with receiving small advantages, they lose their independency and turn into a propaganda tool for politicians.

Additionally, there are no cooperative and collaborative networks amongst CSOs. They have negative competition between them instead of coordination, which partly, originates form their political and ethnic affiliations. As Diamond says, civil society groups should respect the law, the rights of individuals and other groups to express their views: “Part of what the word ‘civil' implies is tolerance and the accommodation of pluralism and diversity.” Unfortunately, this capacity has still not been created in Afghanistan. So, apart from each other, CSOs and affiliated groups remain weak, and can't attract public support. Because of these problems, the entities working honestly have also lost credibility among the people.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Civil society discourse can't be created simply in a war-torn country. Authoritarian regimes and radical ideologies have kept the country in very serious cultural, economic, and intellectual poverty. On the other hand, there are various limitations on freedoms of association, expression, and peaceful gatherings applied by the state. The government has failed to take advantage of the international community's financial, military, and political support for improving the various layers of Afghanistan's situation – including civil society. Thus, civil society must function under strict governmental limitations, without public support in Afghanistan. Considering these factors and the current environment in the country, there does not seem to be any solution that could alleviate these problems immediately. But there are ways for relatively improving the current situation.

For improvement, CSOs and activists should first work to attract public support and trust. It is necessary to begin the work amongst themselves and improve the capacity of their members in management, communication, teamwork skills, and understanding of civil society tasks and roles. They should then try to organize capacity improvement programs for youth, especially schoolchildren and university students, in order to raise amongst them awareness of their civil rights and responsibilities as citizens. In this way, all can hold together public awareness raising campaigns to make civil society roles and civil rights familiar to ordinary. This could be an effective approach for promoting civil society discourse and gaining public support.

Second, to practice the above-mentioned approach, there is a need to network amongst CSOs and other individual or group activists; as long as CSOs and human rights groups work separately, we will continue to witness a passive civil society. CSOs and activists can be effective when they are connected. They can learn working strategies and necessary skills from each other. On the other hand, they can collectively identify challenges they face, and publicly express their problems and take action using democratic means.

Third, as long as people do not trust civil society actors, they will not support them. CSOs and informal groups need to start building trust among themselves. Once they show others that they trust each other, they can gain public trust as well. CSOs should not be managed individually; each member should know the management and the plans to represent an organization. On the other hand, financial transparency is an important element in winning people's trust, and thus they need to make their financial reports public at conferences or publish the information on their websites. Here the ‘Enlightening Movement' can be considered as a good example for reporting financial assistance provided by the Hazara diaspora community for the treatment of those wounded in the 23 July attack. Its financial committee regularly publishes financial reports on Facebook pages. Another clear example is the voluntary work by Dr. Bashardost, who publishes all financial reports on his Facebook page.

Finally, another effective approach for strengthening civil society is through CSOs working with the international community for securing political support along with financial aids. The international community should put pressure on the government to stop oppression, censorship, and restriction of civil society not only on paper, but in practice. The government should believe in the capacity of CSOs and involve them in its reconstruction programs. On the other hand, international donors should take financial transparency very serious: Organizations and groups should have partners in implementing projects as much as possible – and being accountable to the public is crucial in this respect.

This article was first published in Political Critique

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