By Hamayon Rastgar
More than 290 people died and more than a thousand were injured in a recent train crash in India, making it one of the largest such accidents in the country’s history. While many mourned the dead and officials promised an investigation, right-wing Hindutva chauvinists seized their chance to spread anti-Muslim racism in India. Like when they blamed Muslims for the spread of the coronavirus, Hindutva trolls on social media blamed Muslims for the June 2 train wreck. An Indian news website reported the right-wing activists dubbed it “rail jihad.” The site also explained that several social media users used a picture of a white structure to launch another sinister accusation at Muslims: “Look! There is a masjid beside the railway site. You know what THAT means, right? Terrorism.” That incendiary claim was debunked by fact-checking websites, which reported that the building was actually a Hindu temple.
In India, where 80 percent of the population is Hindu, the Hindutva nationalists are constantly spreading propaganda alleging Muslims, who comprise just 12 percent of the population, are conspiring to establish an Islamic state in India and subjugate the majority Hindu population. They even claim that Muslims are increasing their birth rate and are deliberately marrying Hindu girls, which they dub “love jihad” to convert Hindus into Muslims, as methods for that plot to establish an Islamic state. These Hindutva nationalists enjoy the support of the ruling party, organize conferences and publicly call for Muslim genocide “to protect India and make a Hindu nation.”
For years, experts have warned of the dangers of Muslim genocide in India and explain that genocide does not take place out of the blue. Instead, by studying previous genocides, the experts explain that warning signs can be seen well beforehand, including: villainizing an ethnic or religious group or category of people; complaints about the birth rate and increasing population growth of a particular ethnicity or group; political propaganda targeting the civilian population of a specific ethnic or religious group; and identifying that group as agents of a hostile foreign power.
While the situation in India may be unique to that country, it contains lessons for Afghanistan.
Disturbing trends in Afghanistan
The Early Warning Project, which assesses the risk of mass killings around the world, ranks Afghanistan at No. 7 among the 10 highest-risk countries in 2022-23, ahead of India at No. 8. The Project explains that Afghanistan has been a hub of extremist fanatic forces for decades and is now ruled by one, and states, “In particular, the Hazara community faces a risk of crimes against humanity and even genocide, evidenced by the longstanding persecution of this group and increasing attacks by multiple perpetrators since August 2021.”
In Afghanistan, there are worrying signs that need to be taken seriously. In particular, anti-Hazara and anti-Shia propaganda has widely circulated in the country, even by some mainstream media. In January 2015, Radio Azadi, the Afghan branch of the U.S. government’s Radio Free Europe, aired a video report on the influence of Iran in western Afghanistan. The report presents Hazara settlements in the area as a problem, alleging that they were connected to an Iranian government policy to increase its influence in the region.
Three years before this video was produced, in a 2012 paper, Michael Semple, a scholar and long-time observer of Afghanistan, writes:
“When the Hazara migration into Herat speeded up, there were rumours that Iranian agents were establishing a strategic presence in the region by financing Hazara land purchases. The suggestions were implausible because they implied that the Iranian government was providing generous assistance to returning refugees, something which contrasted directly with reports of harsh treatment to the refugees and returnees. Instead, the anti-Hazara rumour was a way of expressing ethnic competition in the city.” [emphasis added]
This is a malicious rumour, and more than a mere “ethnic competition in the city,” because it harbingers at least three early warning signs of genocide: the “rumour” targets a civilian population of a particular ethnicity, complains about their increasing population in a specific area, and identifies them as “agents” of a foreign power. The “rumour” has found its way into scholarship. In 2017, Conrad Schetter wrote in the journal Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism that since 2001:
“The construction of ethnic settlements has emerged as a conscious policy that is fostered by political-ethnic elites and even by their external patrons. In the case of the Hazaras, the Iranian government provided the financial funds to enlarge the Hazaras settlement in Kabul extensively … In the same manner, the Iranian government funded the building of a new Shia suburb in the north of Herat.” [emphasis added]
Although Schetter does not provide a source for his claim, he presents them as plain facts. He fails to see that the increase of the Hazaras in Herat and other cities is part of the trend of urbanization experienced around the world, including in Afghanistan. He does not appear to have bothered to ponder where growing populations of Afghans, including Hazaras, might “extensively” settle if not in cities such as Kabul and Herat. Instead, his errors highlight an important social faultline in Afghanistan and illustrate the existence of ethnic prejudice and paranoia in the larger civil society. It’s also among those early warning signs that genocide experts warn of.
Close observers of Afghanistan are aware that ethnic bigotry is a widespread commodity in the country. Just a look at debates on social media: they illustrate how users are constantly locking heads and issuing strident, threatening rhetoric on ethnic issues. The country’s ethnic relations suffer from what Mahmoud Mamdani, an Africanist, calls “cat and rat syndrome.” He uses this phrase to describe the ethnic relations in Rwanda in the second half of the 20th century, before its own genocide, in which extremists of the Hutu majority killed at least 800,000 minority Tutsis in just 100 days in 1994. “For the rat, there is no animal bigger in the presence of the cat: neither lion, nor tiger, nor elephant. For the cat, there is none more delicious than the rat,” Mamdani wrote. Sadly, this analogy appears to apply to ethnic relations in Afghanistan, where the literate classes spend much of their time and energy in ethnic debates and bickering. Especially, individuals and groups who live in the West are engaging in regular and constant ethnic bickering, as if there is no issue bigger than their perceived issues and no enemy more dangerous than their other compatriots.
In India, Ashutosh Varshney conducted an influential study in different cities that compared cities affected by sectarian violence with cities that do not experience sectarian violence. The study states that cities without sectarian violence are distinguished by more intercommunal and interethnic civic engagement. In contrast, cities in the grip of communalism (sectarian violence) are more fragmented and divided along communal lines and have minimal inter-communal engagement. In other words, cross-ethnic and religious civic engagement across communities weakens the hold of right-wing nationalists over public life in those areas.
In Afghanistan, decades of reactionary wars, and the current dominance by fundamentalist, sectarian forces have weakened progressive and democratic politics, cross-ethnic civic engagement, and the pursuit of democratic and inclusive political projects.
With the Taliban in power, the danger is that the country will experience even further ethnic fragmentation. The Taliban is an ethnocratic theocracy whose essential characteristics beside their insane misogyny, is ethnic oppression, and bigotry discrimination against non-Pashtun ethnicities. While the Taliban seek to consolidate their base by galvanizing chauvinistic sentiments among Pashtuns, the fear is that their policies will push Afghanistan into a cauldron of ethnic fragmentation and bigotry.
Such ethnic divisiveness must be fought in schools, universities, workplaces, mosques, and among the people of Afghanistan. It requires progressive politics of human solidarity and alternative discourses and visions to that of ethnic bickering. The only viable method of struggle against such national oppression, violence, and genocide, is a political vision and effort that unites the broadest layers of society. It needs to facilitate cross-ethnic political and civic cooperation while also acting as an antidote to ethnic fragmentation. In addition, it has to teach and promote anti-racist, anti-fundamentalist, and anti-chauvinist awareness among the people. Only that united political effort can herald a new era of hope and human solidarity.
Hamayon Rastgar is the communications and research officer at Zan Times.
