Hazara

HAZARA

Ethnolinguistic group in Afghanistan.

The Hazara live in the high central mountains of Afghanistan in a region called the Hazarajat, and they number between one and two million. The Hazara are racially distinct from the rest of the Afghans, with Mongoloid physical features, including the epicanthic fold of the upper eyelid commonly seen in the people of central Asia. Although Hazara legend has it that they are the descendants of the army of the great Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, scholars now believe them to be descendants of Chaghatai from Transoxiana, who entered the area as soldiers under Timur and his son Shah Rukh in the fifteenth century. Originally Sunni Moslems, the Hazara were converted to Shiʿism during the time of the Safavid King Abbas I (1588–1692), when this part of Afghanistan was controlled by Iran. The Hazara speak a dialect of Persian known as Hazaragi, which contains some Turkic and Mongol words.

The Hazara lived a relatively independent existence in Afghanistan until the 1890s, when they were brought under the control of Kabul in a series of wars during the reign of Abd al-Rahman (1880–1901). Looked down upon by other Afghans, the Hazara are the poorest of the Afghan ethnolinguistic groups. Some have migrated to Kabul and the other major cities, where they work in menial jobs. During the Afghan war of resistance, the Hazara were able to expel the government representatives from the Hazarajat, and in 1979 they established a quasi-independent government under a council led by Sayyid Ali Beheshti. By the mid-1980s, however, the Hazarajat came under the control of the Iranian-backed Shiʿite groups of Nasr and Pasdaran. In the early 1990s the Hazara political groups united in an organization called Hezb-e Wahadat (Unity Party), led by Mohammed Karim Khalili. This group played a major role in the formation of the Mojahedin government in 1992.

The Hazara, through Hezb-e Wahadat, fought against the Taliban movement, which captured Kabul in 1996, and joined the United Front in the fight against the Taliban government. As a result, the Taliban government carried out a number of massacres against Hazara civilians, both in the Hazarajat and in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, between 1998 and 2000. When the Taliban government was driven from Kabul in December of 2001 the Hazara played an active role in the formation of the interim government of Hamid Karzai, and held several important seats in the interim government.

See also afghanistan; bamyan; shiʿism.

Bibliography

Adamec, Ludwig. Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1991.

Farr, Grant. "The Rise and Fall of an Indigenous Resistance Group: The Shura of the Hazarajat." Afghanistan Studies Journal 1 (1988): 48–61.

Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

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