Hazara Nation

Tim King Salem-News.com

You have to work hard to name a country more different and removed from the United States than Afghanistan. It is the historic crossroads between the Eastern and Western worlds, a place that has been settled since the earliest days of man.

Even though the U.S. and several other nations are sending military troops there year after year to fight a war against criminal insurgents, few in the west really understand the dynamics of this place.

I am no expert, but I have spent time covering the war in Afghanistan and between that experience and my long list of contacts and Internet sources, it made sense to write this and spread the knowledge about this fascinating and captivating land that is as stark, cold and empty as it is historic, vibrant and mystic/exotic.

Afghanistan is bordered by several countries; Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast. The name Afghanistan means the "Land of Afghans" Wikipedia states.

Two Languages, One Primary Religion and Several Cultures

In Afghanistan, there are two official languages: Persian and Pashto. People in the northern areas of the country including the capitol Kabul, usually speak Dari, similar to Persian, while those living in the south and southeast speak Pashto. Several other languages are spoken in their own regions, including Hazaragi, Uzbeki, Turkmen and Balochi.

Most Afghans are Muslims. About 80% of the population is Sunni, while 19% is Shia. Most Islamic people in both Iraq and Iran, are Shia Muslims, approximately 65% in Iraq and 90% in Iran.

A small percentage of the people in Afghanistan are not Muslim. This seems obvious to all who know of the tremendous statues of Buddha that were carved out of a mountainside, only to be destroyed in recent years by teh Taliban.

Among Afghanistan's population today are 15,000 to 30,000 Hindus and Sikhs living in Afghanistan. Most are in the country's larger cities such as Kabul, Kandahar, and Jalalabad.

Afghanistan's population is divided into specific and definable ethnic groups. There is a great amount of cast typing and prejudice and rivalry between the different groups.

These are issues that go far beyond national borders or religions. Bitterness toward the Hazara people is depicted in the recently released movie "The Kite Runner."

An actual census has not been held in Afghanistan for decades, and exact figures about the size and composition of the various ethnic groups are not completely accurate. The CIA World Factbook says it breaks down like this:

* Pashtun: 42%

* Tajik: 27%

* Hazara: 9%

* Uzbek: 9%

* Aimak: 4%

* Turkmen: 3%

* Baloch: 2%

* Other: 4%

The social order in this country seems to correspond with the numbers you see above. Pashtun people are very proud and they can be very kind. But they are not necessarily very tolerant of Hazara people, as depicted in "The Kite Runner."

A gentleman in Afghanistan who I became friends with through MySpace, shows the pride of this ethnic group with this statement:

"Of course we Pashtuns love american people, and we are the greatest hosts towards outsiders. But those who have weapons, and carpet bomb us in our own land. This is something that is intolerable. Today thanks to the American government, there are crooks in the government of Afghanistan."

This individual whose name I will not reveal, told me about the vast numbers of anti-American and anti-Coalition forces that originate from Pakistan, in this statement from March 2007:

"I'm totally against Bush's wars in the middle east and today Afghans remember the Taliban as the most secure government and brought the most stability than any other government did."

But this Pashtun stops short of endorsing the Taliban, in fact very short. Instead he lamented the way Pakistan's Taliban have eradicated the things that meant the most to this historic country. "With the help of their Pakistani friends, they want to eliminate our culture, and our history that we take great pride of."

Most Taliban fighters emerge from the regions of Pakistan that are left alone by the government, as the MySpace friend revealed.

"Taliban fighters are everywhere in Afghanistan and Pakistan-Afghan border Tribal areas. Most of the fighters are coming from the tribal areas, they still have local support in Southern Afghanistan and strong Pashtun regional alliances, and especially more tensions have risen after the Waziri wars, when Pakistan launched a war in Waziristan in 2004."

As we have reported countless times here at Salem-News.com, the problems in Afghanistan for the most part, do not stem from within its borders, but from Pakistan. This is another bizarre example of the alliances that the United States forges. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are dangerous places with almost no equity for the treatment of women. Iran on the other hand is at peace and has a large number of women in professional roles, in college, and holding political office.

The reason Taliban forces hail from Pakistan is simple, and we can thank the bloodthirsty Soviet forces for it. They occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 and as a matter of policy, the Soviet monsters would routinely intentionally poison Afghan water reserves. As they did that, they managed to murder approximately 1.5 million Afghan citizens in the process.

Millions of Afghans fled their native country and most fled to Pakistan, others to Iran. These are comparatively calm and peaceful countries next to Afghanistan. As the U.S. war in Afghanistan mounted, more and more young men of Afghan descent were moving into their parent's homeland. They were trained for the jihad by the mullahs in Pakistan.

Who the Americans Trust

When the Taliban captured of Kabul in 1996, all the Hazara groups united with the new Northern Alliance against the common new enemy. The Hazara people are proud, but they are the most persecuted people in Afghanistan. Time and time again these people of Mongolian heritage have been enslaven. People of Pashtun descent appear to see themselves much higher on the food chain through direct racism and depending on the time period in history, they have made life very difficult for the Hazaras.

The place they originate from, Hazarajat, fell to the Taliban in 1998 despite what has been called "fierce resistance". The Taliban totally isolated Hazarajat from the rest of the world, going as far as not allowing the United Nations to deliver food to the provinces of Bamiyan, Ghor, Wardak, and Ghazni. These things are not easily forgotten by any group of people. The Taliban are by all measures, one of the cruelest and least-Godlike of all the warring factions in the Mideast. They torture women, murder them in the street, and abuse little boys for sexual practices (not that it is unusual there) as a matter of culture. This has led to some of the most bitter resentments in the world.

An American soldier who I spent time with in Afghanistan, Ryan "Vandy" Vandewalker, explained to me how frequently U.S. forces rely on Hazara information in locating Taliban in the regions around Gardez and Ghazni.

"We were going up a mountain," he said, motioning toward a tall peak near the base at Gardez where we stood on the flightline awaiting a helicopter- my ride to the next base. "These Hazara's saw us and told us that not very far up, there was a camp of Taliban." He said some early warning shots scattered the Taliban and it didn't end in a bloody firefight.

"Their food was still cooking on the fire when we walked into that camp". Vandee told me there were a small number of soldiers in his platoon, compared to the number of enemy fighters who they almost walked up on, "Hazara people have been so screwed over by the Taliban. They hate them and they love us and I have never even heard of one lying to Americans forces."

Perhaps there will never be a way to really move past this type of prejudice in Afghanistan today, but it is important to note that some cultures are distinctly more friendly to a western presence, than others. The Pashtuns are largely from Kandahar where fighting has continued non-stop since the beginning of the war there.

One thing the Afghan National Army has done to fight projudice, is to implement a program in the military that makes all battalions or "kandeks" as the ANA refers to them, multi cultural. Here, Tajik's serve with Uzbek's, Hazara's and Pashtun's. They country did divide between the north and south, as the soldiers from the same country literally can not speak to one another. Dari and Pashtun are similar in some ways, but they are completely different languages.

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Today, in addition to his role as a war correspondent in Afghanistan where he spent the winter of 2006/07, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Salem-News.com is the nation's only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators. Tim's coverage from Iraq that was set to begin in April has been delayed and may not take place until August, 2008. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com