By Zahra Nader
After the first part of this opinion piece dealt with ethnic bigotry, this final part will discuss two related questions:
- Where does this hatred come from?
- How has it poisoned the thoughts of so many in our society?
Certainly this hatred of “the other” is not inherent to humans. After all, the reporter who expressed hatred towards me as a Hazara could not have been born with such feelings.
His beliefs, including telling me that I “pretend” to be a journalist and that I used the blood of Hazaras who were killed in ISIS targeted attacks against Hazaras so that I could safely flee Afghanistan are acquired in a social environment.
Of course, we don’t have a choice about which family, gender, tribe, religion, or culture into which we are born. If we had, maybe we would not have chosen Afghanistan as our homeland. Our families and ethnicity have their own beliefs, history, and ways of life. The way of life that we learn at home and in our community defines our own beliefs and outlooks towards life and society. Just as we learn a language as a child, we also learn about culture and how to talk about others. The home is the first environment where we understand concepts like “good” and “bad” and learn when, where, and to whom we apply such concepts.
In the narration of every ethnicity, the side telling the story is on the “good and right” side of history, and the problem has always been with the “other.” Just as it is possible that a Hazara grew up hearing the history of the oppression of the Hazaras at the hands of Pashtun rulers such as Abdul Rahman, I imagine that this reporter also grew up with stories of the enmity between the Hazaras and the Pashtuns which was produced by rulers to justify their oppression of the “other.”
Everything that this reporter has heard, seen, or experienced about Hazaras has shaped his view of Hazaras, so strongly that he appears no longer willing to see any Hazara as an independent being, distinct from their ethnic identity. Similarly, considering the history of oppression and discrimination that Hazaras have experienced from Pashtun rulers of Afghanistan, many Hazaras blame all the Pashtuns and consider them to be the inherent enemies of the Hazaras. This is how our society finds itself deadlocked, with no apparent solution except secession, continuation of war, or suppression.
In Afghanistan, ethnic relations have been formed in the shadow of a specific history and in a specific geography. In this history, one ethnicity considers the right to rule as their hereditary and absolute right and has pursued a project of domination in different eras by suppressing and oppressing other ethnicities. The other, who was oppressed, wants that history of discrimination and oppression to be criticized and for history to recognize this experience of oppression and make a real effort to compensate for historical incidents.
Afghanistan is home to a multitude of ethnicities, cultures, and religious beliefs. Its history has been one of repression and oppression, and, in many cases, such actions have been done with the help and financial support of colonial powers. Yet, as seems apparent in the comments of this reporter, his expectation is that this history of repression and oppression should be respected at any cost. He says, “Did you forget that some insulted leaders and elders for equal rights of minorities and small religious groups?” Oppressed ethnic groups have heard this sentiment often enough to know what is really being asked: he wants Pashtun leaders and rules to be respected, even if they have oppressed other ethnic groups in Afghanistan.The problem is that most of ethnic groups in Afghanistan have their own ethnic leaders who want to be respected at any cost, even at the cost of oppression of other “minorities” and “small groups.”
Today, millions of people in Afghanistan are deprived of their most basic human rights. Instead of talking about building a society in which everyone has equal human rights, we bicker over respecting ethnic “leaders and elders” even though those leaders and elders have often been the sources of ethnic conflicts and oppression.
We can clearly see the violence and oppression of the “leaders and elders” of other ethnicities, but we also support and respect the “leaders and elders” of our own ethnicity and criticize the “leaders and elders” of other ethnicities. This reporter considers the “leaders and elders” of other ethnicities to be “ethnic contractors” and, in the same sentence, complains about me and “my colleagues” including why we insulted the “leaders and elders” of “Afghans,” by which he means Pashtun “leaders and elders.”
Read his words and it’s clear that he believes that “equality” and “rights of minorities and small religious groups” are not as important as respecting his ethnic “leaders and elders” and that the rights of those minorities and other groups could be ignored for the sake of respecting “leaders and elders.” Here, my understanding of his comment is that he wants to say that even if Abdul Rahman Khan massacred Hazaras because they are a “minority,” it’s still not right to insult the autocratic ruler of Afghanistan.
This view forms the dominant narrative of Pashtun supremacists and its argument is that Pashtuns have the right to rule Afghanistan because they are the “majority.” The first objection to that point is that there has been no real census in Afghanistan to confirm or deny this claim of “majority” and “minority.” Yet, this “majority” claim has been hailed by rulers who use it to demand their absolute right to rule over Afghanistan. This narrative of the majority and the minority has been repeated so often that many accept it as truth.
Yet, even assuming that one ethnicity is the majority in Afghanistan, why should the majority have the absolute right to rule over all the people of Afghanistan?
Isn’t it that we are all human beings who were born in a geography called Afghanistan?
Why should those born in the “majority” ethnicity have the absolute right to decide the rights of those born into “minority”?
Power based on the claim of the majority is wrong. It is in such governance that the diversity of Afghanistan is suppressed. It is in this situation that in Afghanistan, the possibility of human life, where human rights are the source of law and sovereignty, has not been provided.
Let’s ask whether Pashtun supremacists who demand the absolute right to rule over this geography have been able to provide a peaceful and humane life for Pashtuns? Have the “leaders and elders” of the Pashtun people made it possible for the ordinary Pashtun citizens of Afghanistan to live peacefully in Helmand, Paktia, and Kandahar? What has been the result of the rule of the majority over the minorities?
As far as I know as a journalist, ordinary Pashtun citizens have not been able to live a normal and peaceful life under the shadows of Pashtun rulers. For decades, Pashtun children, especially girls, have been deprived of the basic human right of education. They’ve been denied learning not because “Hazara girls and boys from Daikundi and Bamyan” have taken it, as Faruq Azam, an advisor to president Ashraf Ghani, once claimed, but Pashtun “leaders and elders” denied those children the possibility of a peaceful life.
Remember that the “leaders and elders” of every ethnicity are those who have always benefited by creating divisions among the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan. To that end, it is those of the “illiterate nation” who are paying a heavy price today by following their politics. Why do some Pashtuns support the Taliban today? I believe that this support is not because the Taliban has provided the Pashtuns with education and other ways to have the possibility of a humane life, but because they consider the rule of the Taliban to be the only way for the majority to dominate the minority.
Who are the unpaid soldiers of today’s ethnic strife but people who think their salvation lies in supporting their own ethnic group rather than finding solutions that guarantee human rights for all the people of Afghanistan. When I say “equality for all,” I mean all the people who were born in the geography called Afghanistan. Being born in Afghanistan and having a sense of belonging to this geography should guarantee equal rights for all of us, regardless of our gender, ethnicity, religion, or culture. If we make any other criteria the source of sovereignty, we continue the policy of coercion and domination of one group over others, the continuation of the contemporary history of Afghanistan.
The tragedy facing Afghanistan is such that we no longer sit and listen to each other’s point of view at the same table. We no longer talk to each other. Instead, we see only the “enemies” in each other and think that, to defend our ethnic identity, we must hate and insult the “other.”
It is painful that we are alienated from each other and believe that the “international community” is more sympathetic to Afghanistan than those who are born and rooted in this geography. What has been the result of this policy? The same international community that we ask to find a solution to Afghanistan’s problems has been a part of the problem all along.
Who made it possible for the Taliban to take over? I am sure it wasn’t all the people of Afghanistan.
Some non-Pashtun intellectuals see the Taliban as synonymous and equal with the Pashtun people, and unfortunately some Pashtun intellectuals and journalists, just like this reporter, make it their duty to defend the Taliban’s policy, because the Taliban are Pashtun. The Pashtun people are just as respectable as other peoples of Afghanistan, and a group like the Taliban can never represent the entire Pashtun population. But, at the same time, if the Pashtun people do not stand up against the policies of the Taliban, then others will assume that they back the Taliban based on their ethnic identity.
A question for a small number of Pashtuns who view the Taliban’s rise to power as an extension of the rule of the majority over the minority and are satisfied with the results: What do you want for the future of your children? Do you want the rule of ignorance and darkness that the Taliban represents or a bright and prosperous Afghanistan where your future generations can have a humane life?
What do we want for our country and for our future generations?
In today’s crisis and misery, no ethnic group in Afghanistan has the conditions or possibility for a humane life. This reality should alarm all ethnic groups in the country. Who are the main losers of the ethnic conflict in Afghanistan? The ordinary people of every ethnicity; those who have not had any share of Afghanistan’s citizenship except suffering, pain, misery, and endless loss. If ethnic conflict and hatred continue, then our future generations will never know how to live in a humane society.
Afghanistan is our country and we all belong to this country, despite the history and narratives we learned at home. A sense of belonging and a responsibility for the fate of future generations must bind us together. Every parent in Afghanistan wants a future of peace and tranquility for their children. Building that future is possible only if we take charge of our joint destiny. In order to do that, we need to redefine the basis on which our country should be ruled. We can start by not using ethnicity, religion, gender, and culture, but rather by focusing on human rights. We are all human beings in addition to belonging to an ethnic, religion, gender, culture, and so on. The only solution for Afghanistan is for each person to be given equal human rights.
Zahra Nader is a PhD student in Gender, Feminist and Women Studies at York University and is the editor-in-chief of Zan Times.
