Troubling reports about ethnic and religious violence in Afghanistan were published recently. In the latest, the Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about the systematic violence against Hazara and Shia minorities, while earlier British parliamentarians warned about “serious risk of genocide” against Hazara in Afghanistan. Of course, the signs of this disaster in Afghanistan were evident long before the Taliban regained power. Contemporary history and our collective historical memory is enough to see how the menacing fire of ethnic and religious bigotry have been burning for years.
We remember how hatred slit nine-year-old Tabasum’s throat, and we remember all the bloody attacks on educational institutions, mosques, and health facilities. Yes! This ear-splitting bell has been ringing for years. For several years in a row, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, which studies the potential risk for genocide in 162 countries, has identified Afghanistan as one of countries at highest risk. The centre’s Early Warning Project ranked Afghanistan as second in the list of countries at risk of descending into the mass killing of civilians in 2020-2021.
Now, it is up to us to look at the bloody horizon ahead to fight and contain this crisis. To realize this goal, we need to accept that the country is on the verge of collapsing into a bloodbath. The danger is now more serious than ever. When crime and murder against “others” becomes the norm, what else can we expect? When the human dignity of people under the name of “non-Afghan and non-Muslim” is negated and put up for auction under the domination of the Taliban’s monoethnic chauvinist system and discourse, how can we expect a fate other than mass murder?
Procrastination is no longer allowed. We know the nature of Taliban as an organization of violent fanatics and criminal. From the beginning of the Taliban’s creation and usurpation of power in the second half of the 1990s until now, they have clearly ethnic bigotry, repression, violence, hatemongering, and structural discrimination against all non-Pashtun groups, women, and others deemed unworthy. Now, Afghanistan stands on the verge of repeating the disastrous history of massacres in the 90s. Society has become bipolarized and extreme and could potentially collapse chaos. The ethnicization of politics, the fragmentation of political forces and civil society on ethnic lines, and the disregard of the international community are once again pushing us towards an irreversible fault at a maddening speed. The fragility of the current situation is such that it is difficult to even raise this issue in an atmosphere free from prejudice and ignorance.
The Taliban are the soldiers of a discourse that considers ethnic and gender supremacy as divinely granted. In fact, this belief forms their political signature and the historical identity of the Taliban. Therefore, hoping to change or adjust them is futile and possibly dangerous. The current crisis shows that – in case of solidarity of all political, social, and civil forces, as well as careful, vigilant, and responsible study of the current situation – it is possible to look for preventive solutions.
The honest and sad reality of the past few decades is that , right-wing, mono-gender and reactionary military groups such as the Taliban gained power due to the weakness of progressive currents inside the country and elsewhere. We witnessed how gender and ethnic chauvinism in the pyramid of power led to the reflection and reproduction of this discourse at all levels of society. The example of this argument is the experience of the past two decades, when most civil society, cultural and intellectual circles, were mired in the discourses of ethnic nationalism.
Having said that, the study of transition in countries that were in a similar situation to that of Afghanistan indicates that women’s independent struggles can be a liberating horizon. The history of women’s movements harbingers that there is the potential for a major transformation in the current crisis. For example, what separates marginalized groups such as women, dissidents, and transgenders is their experience of being oppressed through the dominance of racialist discourses. Women’s historical experience of being subjugated and always being considered “other” from patriarchy has given them enough political awareness to be cautious in reproducing any oppressive relations. This lived experience has given women empathy for all oppressed and marginalized ethnic and religious groups. It is enough to look at the literature, slogans, and methods of women’s struggle against the Taliban in the past year to open a window of hope. So far, the movement of resistance of women in Afghanistan has been the initiator of cross-ethnic and peaceful progress demands, which have not gone astray despite efforts to expropriate them.
In short, the women’s resistance movement, reminds us of an important fact about the inflamed context of contemporary Afghanistan: If all oppressed groups stand together against all forms of oppression, then we will see a path from the darkness toward the light.
