Hazara Nation

HRW

The massacre in Yakaolang follows previous attacks by the Taliban on Hazaras and members of other ethnic minorities in north central Afghanistan. The provinces of Baghlan and Samangan, which lie north of Bamiyan, have seen intermittent fighting between Taliban and United Front forces since 1998. As a means of controlling the civilian population and ensuring that it does not give assistance to the United Front, Taliban forces have frequently resorted to detaining men from villages in the area and holding them for prolonged periods as virtual hostages.n May 2000, Taliban forces summarily executed a group of civilian detainees near the Robatak pass, which lies along the road connecting the towns of Tashkurgan and Pul-i Khumri. Until a systematic forensic investigation is carried out, the precise number of those killed cannot be known, but Human Rights Watch has obtained confirmation of thirty-one bodies at the execution site, twenty-six of which have been identified as the bodies of Ismaili Shia Hazara civilians from Baghlan province. Their remains were found to the northeast of the Robatak pass, in an area known as Hazara Mazari, on the border between Baghlan and Samangan provinces. The area was controlled by the Taliban at the time of the executions. There are reported to be as many as three other gravesites near the pass.All of those who have been identified were detained for four months before being killed; many of them were tortured before they were killed. The men were taken from their homes by Taliban troops between January 5 and January 14, 2000. The facilities at which the men were detained were under the command of Commander Mullah Shahzad Kandahari, who was the Taliban commander of the Khinjan front north of Kabul and who was also reportedly present in Yakaolang when it was held by the Taliban in January 2001.

On January 5, 2000, a Taliban force raided the village cluster of Naikpai, in Doshi district of Baghlan province. The Taliban soldiers came in a convoy of pickup trucks at dawn. They started to round up men from Bakas, Zaighola, and other hamlets in Naikpai, seizing many of them in their houses. A number of those who were arrested were village elders. There were many other people present and virtually the entire population of the village witnessed the arrests. Local residents assumed that the arrests were a warning to deter them from having contacts with United Front forces.The house-to-house searches and arrests continued for nine days. While they were underway, the detainees were held at Mullah Shahzad's operational military base at Khinjan. Relatives of the detainees were allowed to visit the base, and were informed of conditions in the facility by the detainees. The men who were detained between approximately January 5 and 10 were subjected to severe beatings with electric cables and were forced to stand outside in sub-zero temperatures and snow. One of those who was later killed near the Robatak pass, Sayyid Tajuddin, who was thirty-eight, suffered frostbite as a result of the exposure following his beating. When the detainees were transferred to Pul-i Khumri, he was admitted to the Textile Factory hospital. Both feet were amputated there, and he was provided with a pair of locally fabricated crutches.
At the end of the operation, around January 14, all of the detainees were transferred to Pul-i Khumri, where Shahzad maintained his rear base. The detainees were held in the residential quarters attached to the Pul-i Khumri Textile Mill. On or around May 8, the detainees were removed from the facility. When relatives inquired as to their whereabouts they were ordered by the authorities to leave the area. However, a staff member of the facility informed them that the men had been loaded onto a single truck, thought to be a "kalafil" truck of Soviet manufacture, during the evening. The truck was reportedly escorted by a Taliban Toyota pickup. The prisoners were later found dead at Hazara Mazari, a journey of approximately one-and-a-half hours from the detention facility. The men are believed to have been shot the same night that they were taken from the facility.

On or around May 18, shepherds from the Robatak pass area reported the presence of bodies to the provincial authorities in Samangan. The mayor of Samangan detailed a party of ten workmen, with an escort of Taliban troops, to locate and bury the bodies at the Hazara Mazari site.
It was apparent from the appearance of the bodies that the detainees had been brought to the execution site with their hands bound behind their backs, and tied together by their forearms in groups of three, according to a worker who assisted in the burials. Twenty-eight of the victims were found lying where had been were shot, face down on the ground. The execution party had made no attempt to remove or cover the bodies. The body of another man, identified as Sahib Dad, was found tied to a tree, his arms and legs each tied separately with a length of rope in such a way that his captors would have been able to manipulate them while he was immobilized.

The workmen buried the twenty-nine bodies at the Hazara Mazari site. The burial was perfunctory. The bodies were covered with at most thirty centimeters of earth, inadequate to protect them from wild animals. The worker who assisted in the burials described what he saw:

The bodies were lying on the ground face down. All of their hands were bound behind their backs.... The bullet wounds could not be made out on the backs but there was blood on the ground beneath the chests. I saw the bodies about four days after they had been killed. Their backs had not been blown up but the blood had obviously poured out of the chests and I understood that they had been killed by firing into the back because there was no visible wound on any other part of the bodies and they were lying in pools of blood that had poured out of their chests. They were tied together in groups of three using their turbans and scarves which had been wound together to make ropes. They were tied together one to the other, using their own turbans.... To tell you the truth we were so terrified and upset that we barely dared look at the ground. You could hardly stand there.
Soon after the workmen returned, word reached Naikpai that some of its people were among the dead. A group of residents went to inspect the gravesites, where they found shallow graves and recognized bits of clothing belonging to their missing relatives. They also found two more bodies at a short distance from the others; the two men had been shot and their bodies were left where they fell.

Since the massacre, the Robatak area has remained under Taliban control. Local human rights researchers visited the site at Hazara Mazari in November 2000 and photographed the remains that were visible from the surface. Some of those photographs are appended to this report.

The actual number of persons killed at Robatak may be much higher that the thirty-one that Human Rights Watch has been able to confirm. Other gravesites have been reported at different locations near the pass. However, the researchers believe that if there were bodies at these sites, they may have been disturbed or moved by Taliban authorities as no remains were visible from the surface.

The motive for the prisoners' killing remains unclear. The killings took place just after the Taliban and the United Front had negotiated an agreement on a prisoner exchange during a summit meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, held under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. And during the same time period, United Front forces appear to have attacked and killed Taliban troops in ambushes along the road that runs through the Robatak pass Read the full story

HRW.Org

On January 7, Taliban forces began advancing on Yakaolang from Bamiyan in a bid to recapture the district. Moving westwards, they established their rear base at Feroz Bahar, east of the center of town, from which they launched three main thrusts. The first attack met with stiff resistance on the hill to the east of Dar-i Ali, a valley in which a number of villages are clustered. The Taliban forces were compelled to retreat and call for reinforcements after losing some thirty of their men. The second attack, which contained the main column of troops, was held up at Surkh Kotal, near Zulflucht, for about four hours until the Hizb-i Wahdat forces retreated. After breaking through the defensive line at Surkh Kotal, the Taliban proceeded to Nayak, the district center, without further resistance, reaching it on the morning of January 8. A witness described the Taliban advance On the evening of the January 7, a friend told me that a helicopter had been heard flying into Feroz Bahar. Initially people thought that it was supplying the United Front troops, but it turned out that it had been flying in Taliban troops. That night there were sounds of heavy fighting. In the morning again, we heard intense firing, and there was clearly a battle going on in Nayak. Later that morning Nayak fell and the fighting was over.... From 2:00 p.m. on January 8 we watched United Front troops retreating, walking past us and with their mounted column, heading west towards lower Yakaolang. There were so many of them that it took the rest of the day for them to pass us-they were trooping past us until late evening. They were heading for Deh Surkh and Daga.

Upon reaching the district center, the Taliban organized eleven search parties. They were each allocated a sector of central Yakaolang and moved from house to house within their respective sectors, rounding up male occupants. The search party allocated to Dar-i Ali commandeered twelve horses and so was able to travel extensively through the valley, only part of which is accessible by road.
Another witness described the Taliban's capture of the district and the search operations in Dar-i Ali. He first learned of the Taliban advance when Hizb-i Wahdat troops stationed near his office informed him that a helicopter had landed at Feroz Bahar, and that they believed a Taliban attack was imminent. Between midnight and 3:00 a.m. there was heavy fighting all around the area. When there was a lull in the fighting at 3:00 a.m., the witness fled to Dar-i Ali. After about 8:00 a.m., the fighting stopped. At approximately 3:00 p.m., he went to a friend's house that was nearby and asked if he could wait there. The family told him that the Taliban were conducting searches and that it would not be safe. After leaving his friend's house, the witness encountered a group of Taliban troops who ordered him to join a crowd of men who were being herded towards a local aid agency.The witness saw three bodies lying in front of the aid agency. The Taliban soldiers said that they were men who had tried to run away.The witness described what happened next:

A group of about one hundred men was gathered at the [aid] center. After some time the Taliban ordered us to move, and we were herded down towards Nayak [the district center]. At first the pace was slow, but after some time we were met by a group of mounted Taliban and the soldiers started to whip the detainees and ordered us to move more quickly. When we got to Nayak, another group of Taliban was waiting there at the entrance to the bazaar, armed with sticks. They beat us and told the Taliban in charge of the group to "take them to the Mullah.
According to other witnesses, the detainees were herded to the office of a relief agency located in Nayak, where most were later executed.

As reports of detentions and killings began to circulate through the district, groups of village elders sought meetings with Taliban commanders to ensure the security of their communities. According to a witness:

The same day [January 10] news came that the Taliban were searching houses as far as Girdbayd, some five kilometers from Nayak. People coming from there said that the Taliban had killed some of the people there. We all discussed among ourselves whether this could be true or not. After a couple of days [January 11 or 12], eight or ten of the village elders decided that they must go to Nayak to discuss the security of the area with the Taliban. They set off on foot towards Nayak.

The following is his account of what the elders told him:
On the way there, near Qala Issa Khan [a hamlet about 500 meters west of Nayak, also known as Qala Arbab Hassan], the elders saw Jan Agha, a local Tajik commander, sitting in a Taliban "Datsun" (a pickup truck). Jan Agha was gesticulating at the elders, pointing to something in the village, but they could not work out what it was, and so they proceeded.
The elders walked into Nayak unchallenged and went straight to the Taliban command post. They asked to see Commander Mullah Abdul Sattar, but he refused to see him. Then they managed to find Commander Haji Faqoori and after some persuasion, he managed to get Commander Sattar to see them. Sattar told the elders that he had just received orders from Kandahar, from Mullah [Mohammad] Omar [the head of the Taliban movement], declaring a general amnesty. He instructed the elders to go and meet with [Hizb-i Wahdat commander] Khalili and tell him not to fight any more, or there would be more killing.
On their return, Jan Agha told the elders what he had been pointing to and they saw a pile of bodies at the edge of Qala Issa Khan.

According to the same witness, the elders subsequently met with Khalili, but he refused to stop fighting. Fearful of further conflict, the witness said, many local residents started to leave the area.

Mullah Mohammad Omar, the head of the Taliban movement, stated in late January 2001 that there was no evidence of a civilian massacre in Yakaolang, but in the same interview retracted an earlier offer to allow journalists to visit the area.

The identity of those Taliban soldiers who actually carried out the killings in each case has yet to be established. However, eyewitness testimony and Taliban radio broadcasts have helped to identify some of the Taliban commanders who were present in Yakaolang, while information about the Taliban command structure points to the commanders with responsibility for the conduct of Taliban forces in Baghlan at the time of the Robatak detentions and killings. One commander, Mullah Shahzad Kandahari, appears to have been involved in both operations.

As general commander of the Khinjan front in Baghlan province during the first half of 2000, Mullah Shahzad had authority over the detention facilities in Khinjan and Pul-i Khumri, where the Robatak prisoners were held, and was in command of the troops stationed in the area. The Taliban Chief Military Commander for the Northern Zone (Fifth Corps, based in Mazar-i Sharif), Mullah Abdul Razak Nawfiz, was the immediate superior officer of Mullah Shahzad, and was responsible for directing his operations and briefing him on Taliban strategy and policy. He was also the official who would have had primary responsibility for investigating crimes by the commander and preventing further abuses.

Witnesses have testified that Mullah Shahzad was also in command of some of the Taliban troops in Yakaolang. Others Taliban commanders in Yakaolang included Qari Ahmadullah of Ghazni, the minister of intelligence, who reportedly issued a statement from Yakaolang on the Taliban-operated Radio Shariat. Also present were Mullah Abdul Sattar, at the time the regional military commander for Hazarajat; Mullah Abdullah Sarhadi, the former regional military commander for Hazarajat; and Mullah Abdul Salam "Rocketi," a former commander with the Ittihad-i Islami party. Further investigation is necessary to determine what role, if any, they may have played in the massacres.

Mullah Omar said that journalists were biased against the Taliban and should instead visit Kandahar to see the graves of Taliban prisoners killed by United Front forces in Mazar-i Sharif during 1997. Kate Clark, "Taleban bar press from `massacre' site," BBC World Service, January 28, 2001,

On at least two occasions, the Taliban killed delegations of Hazara elders who had attempted to intercede with them. On January 9, elders of Kata Khana gathered to meet with the Taliban. The Taliban arrested the entire group and killed everyone except two neighborhood leaders. In another case, the elders of Bed Mushkin village met with the Taliban to discuss security for the area. All were killed except one.
The main execution site in Yakaolang appears to have been outside the relief agency in Nayak where the detainees from Dar-i Ali were killed. Witnesses also reported seeing piles of bodies in four other locations in and around Nayak: outside the district hospital, in the ravine behind the mosque in the old bazaar area, outside the prayer hall of Mindayak village, and at Qala Arbab Hassan. Of these, the largest pile of bodies was at Qala Arbab Hassan. Other killings were reported from neighborhoods in areas surrounding the district center, including outside the leprosy and tuberculosis clinics. A witness who visited Yakaolang district four weeks after the incident inspected one of the mass graves at Bed Mushkin village, in which twenty-six bodies had been found. One of the bodies was that of a seventeen-year-old boy, Mir Ali, much of whose skin had been removed either prior to or after his death.12 In a separate case, seven men were shot dead at the Zarin crossroad near the leprosy clinic in Yakaolang.

Eyewitnesses reported that personnel of the Center for Cooperation on Afghanistan (CCA), a local aid agency-identified as Sayyid Sarwar and Sayyid Talib-were among the civilians rounded up in Dar-i Ali and executed outside the relief agency office. Other staff members of relief agencies were identified among those killed. These included a driver named Daoud who was working for a international humanitarian agency; a man named Qasim who worked as an assistant in the leprosy clinic; and Sayyid Ibrahim and a man named Tahsili, both of whom worked in the district hospital and were staff members of a local assistance organization. Witnesses reported seeing a Land Cruiser and a Russian-made jeep in the possession of the Taliban, both of which belonged to the Yakaolang offices of humanitarian aid organizations.
Several staff members of another local leprosy clinic were also identified among those killed: Sayyid Yakut, a gardener from the village of Kata Khana, near the center of Yakaolang district; a man named Taqi, a carpenter, from Akhundan village; Gul Agha, son of Mahmood, of Sarasiab village; and Sayyid Mahdi, son of Burki, a watchman, also from Sarasiab. One of the center's leprosy patients, Sayyid Amir of Panj-o-ak village, was also reported killed.

Taliban forces were only able to remain in Yakaolang for two weeks, before being driven out of the district again on January 23. While retreating north through the Dar-i Shikari valley, on or about January 20, a convoy of Taliban forces encountered a group of Hazara herders at Tala Burfak. Apparently frustrated that their path was blocked by the Hazaras' herds, some of the Taliban fired gunshots at the group, killing three of them on the spot.

The armed conflict in Yakaolang and the abuses committed in the district by the Taliban resulted in massive internal displacement. Humanitarian aid workers estimate that thousands of persons from Yakaolang took refuge in Panjao and Lal districts, the Tarpuch sub-district of Balkhob district, the Kashan valley in Kohistanat district, and Dar-i Chasht in Lower Yakaolang district. Read the full story

It rarely happens that a western educational institute will publish the books from a third world country, which is severely blackened with the names of the Taliban and terrorism. But recently, Robert D. McChesney, a well-respected professor at New York University fell in love with the books of Fayz Mohammad Katib, a historian from Afghanistan. Robert D. McChesney not only translates Katib’s book, Kabul Under Siege: Fayz Muhammad’s Account of the 1929 Uprising,but as director of The Afghanistan Digital Library, digitizes Katib’s 900 000 words. In May of 2004 the website announced that The Afghanistan Digital Library project at New York University has this month completed the digitization of Fayz Muhammad Katib’s 900, 000-word, documentary history of Afghanistan entitled Siraj al- tawarikh (Torch of Histories). Through decades, Fayz Mohammad’s works has gained a reliable reputation as a referral source amongst both Russian and Western scholars. Fayz Mohammad Katib in seven decades of his life, fought for reforms and democracy; he appeared as the hardest working historian in recent centuries, but despite his unique reputation in the outside world he was ignored intentionally for fifty years inside Afghanistan

Fayz Muhammad Kateb was born in 1862, in a Hazara family in Gazni province. He started his education from early childhood at his village, Zarsang. Later, he went to India and Iran and studied Islamic science. When he was in his mid thirty his people, Hazaras experienced the harshest storm and pulverisation of their history by Aburahman, a newly appointed Amir by Britain. It is believed that Abdurahman massacred 62 percent of Hazara people during 1883-1887. Abdurahman and his fellow Pashtuns occupied the vast and rich parts of Hazarajat land. Despite all those creeks of blood which were still flooding in Hazarajat, Katib managed to enter into Adburahman's court. Katib served years as a “member of Amir Abdurahman’s secretariat”. After Amir's death, Habibullah, the eldest son of emir was the only person to replace him. Meanwhile, the small group of intellectuals known as Junbish-I Mashrutyat or The Constitutionalist Movement who survived twenty-three years of murderous emir welcomed the new power shift. The Constitutionalist Movement sent a letter for the new emir and asked him for social and political reforms. Even though, the new emir wasn’t as brutal as his father, he demolished the group and killed and imprisoned the members. Fayz Mohammad Kateb was among them and spent some times in Sherpur prison. But prison couldn’t stop his political struggle for a just and humane Afghanistan. Years later, when Amanullah Khan, the reformist emir came into power, Katib encouraged him to dismiss slavery. The encouragement of Katib and his fellow constitutionalists resulted the abolition of slavery and liberation of thousands Hazara, Noristani, and Badakhshani slaves. In the great assembly of 1922 in Paghman, Katib in his speech by relying to the roots of freedom and verses of Qur’an demanded the recognition of the Shi’a religion. Before finishing his speech the assembly witnessed a chaotic riot and condemnation of his boldness by the vast majority of participant tribe leaders and fanatic mullahs. Even though Katib's historic speech didn’t result the recognition of the Shi'a religion, but it reveals the fact of the continuous struggles of a brave man who didn't neglect any single opportunity, no matter what ever was the cost


Katib is the author of ten valuable history books, but the ignorance and censorship of submissive governments led by a specific ethnic group caused that 4 of them still remain unpublished, and in his own magnificent hand script. Beside being a "historian, writer and intellectual, Katib is best known for his history books of Afghanistan called "Sarajul Tawarikh", which provides one of the best references on the 19th century Afghan history." (Wikipedia website) " In 1893, he entered the services of Sardar Habiblullah, son of Amir Abdul Rahman, and began work on his monumental three-volume history." (Ludwig W. Adamec) To compelte his books he was supplied with government archives and even profiled secret documents. Belonging to an oppressed people, it was brilliant opportunity for Katib to manage a life documentary of the brutal emirs who were known of building minarets from the heads of murdered innocent men, women and children. Katib in his unique rich prose booked emirs lootings, massacres, pulverisations, and another unspeakable crime's commands and decrees. Katib in his history book with an old and ancient style prose usually says: His Highness and Majesty emir ordered to Hazara [or] Noristani [or] Badakhshani rebels have to be massacred, looted and enslaved...” (Online Sarajul Tawarikh) The contemporary Afghan intellectuals beside admiring his braveness and sacrifices believe that he was a wise man and able to analyze the mentality of emir and his court, how else could it be possible to bring in pen, and document, and publish all of those atrocities and brutalities by emir's permission. But it doesn't mean that Katib accomplished his risky mission without encountering harms. Several times he was punished and humiliated for his writing, also his two valuable books that didn't contain implicit prose enough, found no permission to be published


Katib lived under the rules of several emirs, even Abdurahman, later his son, Habibluh Khan and his grand son Amanulla Khan, but he didn't survive another Habibulah known as Bacha-e-Saqaw (son of water carrier), a “bandit Amir” who swept reformist king, Amanullah and ruled only nine months. "In 1929, Habibullah, Bacha-e Saqaw, issued a decree on the names of the renown Shiites of Kabul such as Mohammed Ali Jauntier Chandawali …, and Faiz Mohammad Hazara. They were asked to travel to Dai-Zangi[Hazarajat] and obtain the support of the Hazara populace in that area. But the Hazara people refused to do so, and the Shiite leaders of Kabul city returned without any success.The disappointed Habibullah then order them punished for failing in their mission. In the result of the brutal beating, Faiz Mohammad Hazara got sick for a few days, but later died on Wednesday (4th-Ramadhan, 1347 of Lunar Calendar)Feberuary14,1929
(Wikipedia website)
After his death Katib was ignored intentionally for five decades. Despite the vast usage of his books in internal and outside world educational inistitutes, belonging to oppressed Hazara nationalty no one was bothering himself to remind and appreciate his 50 years struggle for writing the greatest history books of modern Afghanistan. Even no body knew where his grave was. Finally, in the last years of communist regime, 18 years ago, they decided to break the long silence of depreciation of this great man and opened the closed windows of their morality. Since then, there have been held several international conferences in and out side of Afghanistan about Katib and his monumental history books. They called him "The Father of Modern History of Afghanistan", what Katib deserved to be called long ago

Katib in seven decades of his eventful life fought for democracy and reforms; he used his affluent prose for documentation of a bloody history which cost him severe punishment in his life and a long ignorance after his peaceful rest. Writing the truth of history from inside the court of a brutal man who just finished killing sixty two percent of your people is an unimaginable risky play. Undoubted, his connotative fluent ancient prose survived him in that stormy ocean of blood. Katib was a brave and patient man who walled with words a surviving hut around him, and traveled with a monster emir on his kingdom ship in bloody ocean of nineteen century. Katib's unique and peaceful struggles contain inspiring lessons for young generation of Afghanistan to fight against discrimination and warlords Read the full story