By Zahra Nader
For a long time, I wanted to write about the question of ethnicity and ethnic bigotry in Afghanistan. I was looking for an example when I read a comment by a reporter on one of my recent posts on Facebook. I met this reporter only once at a media conference organized by Global Investigative Journalism Network and Centre for Investigative Journalism Nepal in Kathmandu, in 2016. We became Facebook friends. He sometimes left me comments and acted like a normal Facebook friend until we started Zan Times.
After Zan Times was launched, I noticed a change in the tone of his comments – they displayed hostility and sarcasm. This reporter left a comment on my Facebook account where I shared my written piece titled “I am writing for you.” He stated that I write “excellently” but then wrote, “I wish journalists and your colleagues did not sell their dignity.” He claimed that my colleagues “selling their dignity” had led to “country’s destruction.” Then he said that “journalists and my colleagues” – by which he meant Hazara journalists – who “denied being Afghan” had sent “innocent children of the country to foreign wars.” He said that “every Afghan knows who is wrong and who is right” and said that my writing makes no difference to his “history” and “life.”
There are many on social media who issue slurs and smears as it can be easy to insult people online when they don’t know you personally. I thought this reporter knew me. As well, as a reporter, he is expected to care about facts and express his views responsibly. In terms of ethnic background, he is a Pashtun, and though he did not explicitly use the word “ethnicity,” what he wrote is an implicit attack on me as a person with a Hazara ethnic identity.
In this article, I will discuss how I believe that the ethno-centric views of this journalist reflects a major social problem of our society: the ethnicization of social and political spaces, as well as bigotry that has weakened social solidarity within the country to such an extent that we have stopped treating each other as humans but instead look to the international community to save us from ourselves.
After reading his comments, I asked him to clarify what he meant, reminding him that we’d once met in Nepal. I wrote:
“From the ‘fake news’ comments that you leave for Zan Times posts to this comment, which is not clear what you mean and whom you are addressing, I don’t know what I have done wrong to you that you make such sarcastic and bitter comments. As a reporter, you are one of my colleagues. But it really bothers me to see these comments from a reporter. Please tell me, whom do you mean by ‘my colleagues’ and who sold their ‘dignity’? And who sent ‘innocent children of the country to foreign wars’? And I would be grateful if you could clearly state where all this grudge and anger is coming from? And why do you consider me responsible for others’ actions?”
He responded:
”To the same extent that the traitorous politicians have oppressed this country and the oppressed and condemned people, the divisive and ethnic contractors have used this illiterate nation and its subjects as a tool. Weren’t these the same biased and totalitarian journalists who used derogatory words and insults for Afghan dignitaries and prides of this land? Did you forget that some insulted leaders and elders for equal rights of minorities and small religious groups?
I and all the people now know how easy it is to throw innocent girls and women into the dark prisons of the Taliban from a safe country (where you are).
As far as I can see, most of your reports (in Zan Times) which half of its name is not an Afghan word, are biased, oppressive, without professional balance, published against a particular group.
I believe that family and ethnic media like Zan Times and its kind will never be known among the people of Afghanistan as a media, but as an ethnic and biased partisan loudspeaker.
Please first separate the concept of a journalist from a translator for foreign media. And most people like you were only translators for foreign media, not journalists. I am sorry that Canada and the university that gave you a room to work – aren’t they aware of your resentful and racist activities?
Please visit Zan Times and see how many resentful issues it has published related to certain ethnic groups since the beginning of its activity. It is very easy to blindly fire bullets from a stranger’s bed, and while it is harmless to your excellency [sic]. I understand that my words will never be acceptable to you, but this is a fact that was brought to a noblewoman’s attention.”
I posted a screenshot of his comments and his photo on my Facebook and Twitter feeds. I wanted to see how others on social media respond to this. (I’ve since deleted those posts to avoid further criticism of him.) As expected, many criticized and insulted him. Some labelled his comments as chauvinistic and some used his statements as a way to attack all Pashtuns. After receiving such negative and hateful comments, he left a private comment for me, which could not be seen by the public:
“It is very real, all little literate Hazaras have jumped here, and this is an illustration of Hazara ethnocentrism.
I’m sorry for how easy it was to get crushed, with all of your possessions evaporating. I wish one day you would inquire about the condition of the poor Hazaras of Barchi or Ghazni city. I’m sorry that you used all these poor people as a human shield and fled abroad yourself. I’m sorry for how you used the offices of Mohammad Mohaqiq, Karim Khalili and Sarwar Danesh, pretending to be journalists and reached England and Toronto with all your kids and cubs. It is regrettable that you traded with the blood of the martyrs of Kaaj, Roshnaee, Mauod … and you are still dragging these poor Hazara people into the mouth of calamity.”
Let us see the issue of ethnicity and this journalist’s perspective in the context of Afghanistan and ask how “othering” ethnic bigotry has become the biggest socio-political problem in Afghanistan?
In particular, how much does this reporter know about me as a person, as a citizen and as a person from Hazara ethnicity, and how he uses this knowledge to produce and reproduce hate against me as “the other”?
One thing is implicit in his comments, and that is that he has no real knowledge of me, my work and my colleagues at Zan Times. His comments reveal that not only has he not read my writings, but he also did not even glimpse at the articles and reports published by Zan Times. If he had known me and my colleagues at Zan Times, maybe he would not have directed his generalized accusations and insults at us in such a blatantly unjust way. My guess is that knowing us through our work is not important to him. With the aim of delegitimizing our work, he has thrown slurs and insults at me and my colleagues. His judgment of me and the work of the Zan Times is based not on objective facts, but on my ethnic identity as a Hazara.
It’s clear that he didn’t even read the article that he commented on, for if he had read that article then he wouldn’t have stated that “I wish one day you would inquire about the condition of the poor Hazaras of Barchi” because, in that article, I wrote that I am a Hazara from Barchi, a girl who studied in a school that operated out of a tent and had meager resources. In the age of the Internet, finding such information is not difficult. He could have simply discovered that I had worked as a journalist long before joining the New York Times, and that, contrary to his claim, I had never worked as a translator. His information and accusations against me are not rooted in objective reality, but an idea he holds in his mind about Hazaras or “the other.”
Even though he knows from my Facebook posts that I moved to Canada in 2017, he still accused me of fleeing Afghanistan with help of Hazara politicians he named. To make the fact straight: I have never worked in any politician’s office and I came to Canada through my husband’s citizenship in Canada. Again, facts seem to hold no importance to him; instead, what matters is that I am a “Hazara,” the “other” he hates and wants to make sure he accuses her of everything he can to justify his hatred.
He has accused me of “bigotry” and “racism” without providing any evidence for it, and blatantly has announced that all reports and productions of Zan Times are proof of my “bigotry and racism.” However, all the productions and reports produced in Zan Times are not my individual work. My colleagues in the small Zan Times family are coming from different ethnic backgrounds, including Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks, and we hope that we will be able to expand our team in the future to better reflect the gender, ethnic, and cultural diversity of Afghanistan.
Despite the many problems we face, Zan Times journalists report from north to south and from east to west of Afghanistan. However, without any evidence, this journalist has accused Zan Times of being “biased,” “oppressive,” “targeting a particular group,” but he does not provide any evidence to back his claim, instead generally claiming that such “evidence” is available at Zan Times website. It seems that this reporter’s hatred of my ethnic identity is such that he does not even allow himself to read Zan Times articles and reports, maybe because he thinks that my ethnic identity is reflected in all Zan Times productions. Contrary to what he thinks, Zan Times has never produced any work against any ethnic group. It is a platform for us to speak truth to power and document the human rights violations in Afghanistan. How can this be understood as working against an ethnic group?
For him, it doesn’t matter who I am as a person, what I have done, and am doing. This feeling of resentment and hatred towards this “other” who is Hazara has made him blind to reality and made him judge my work and my colleagues at Zan Times based on the hatred of this “other.”
This reporter represents the dominant approach of our society (a major social crisis of our time), an approach that places people’s ethnic identity as a source of judgment and prejudice, not their individual work and activities. The prevailing approach is that we identify people by ethnic labels and we consider them guilty and responsible for everything that has supposedly happened under the name of that ethnicity.
This reporter considers me, a Hazara, responsible and guilty for the actions of “my colleagues” and “ethnic contractors” of Hazara, and, because of that, he blames and throws insults at me. Interestingly, he ended his second comment by saying that what he said would “never” be “acceptable” to me, because he appears to believe that I am not a human capable of understanding, but am a Hazara who will support the position of “her ethnicity” at all costs, likely as he himself does.
In the last three decades the divide between the ethnic groups of Afghanistan has grown so wide that we seem to have stopped seeing each other as human beings. Somehow we think that, except for “our ethnic group,” other groups do not understand the human condition or what we experience. And this is how we have become partisans of our ethnicity and why we judge and condemn people based not on their performance and activities but on their ethnic identity.
By supporting the cause of our own ethnicity, we have reached a dead end where we no longer believe that mutual acceptance and collective inter-ethnic political projects in Afghanistan is possible. In many cases, we see the separation, suppression, and elimination of other ethnic groups as the solution. Today, it seems that the language governing relations between citizens of Afghanistan is the language of hatred, enmity, and physical exclusion of others.
Where does this hatred come from?
How has it poisoned the thoughts of so many in our society?
Read the second part of this opinion piece next week!
Zahra Nader is a PhD student in Gender, Feminist and Women Studies at York University and is the editor-in-chief of Zan Times.
