For more than a century now, the Hazara people of Afghanistan and Pakistan have been victims of systematic crimes such as genocide, slavery, sexual abuse, war crimes, and discrimination.

Hazara poet, Kamran Mir Hazar, who crafted the letter notes, “Article two of the Convention on Genocide describes the dire situation of the Hazaras, and the world must no longer ignore the continuing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Hazaras. We the poets around the world will continue our work to support the Hazaras by writing a chain poem and collecting more signatures.” he added.

Despite the deployment of thousands of international troops in Afghanistan, Hazaras are regularly attacked by Afghan Kuchis, backed by the Taliban and the Afghan government. Hazara roads are often blocked by Taliban gunmen. Hazara cars are randomly halted and the passengers murdered. In central Afghanistan, a huge population of Hazaras have been marginalized and denied their basic human rights.

As a result, millions of Hazaras have fled Afghanistan, creating unnecessary refugee populations in countries like Turkey, Greece, Australia, and Indonesia. In Pakistan as recently as 16 February 2013, more than three hundred Hazara men, women and children were killed or injured in a terrorist bombing in Quetta, Pakistan.

Poets World-wide implore world leaders to declare of a state of emergency regarding the Hazara situation in Afghanistan; to pressure Afghan and Pakistani governments to stop discrimination and stop supporting terrorists groups; to grant asylum to Hazara asylum seekers; establish an international Truth Commission to investigate the systematic crimes against Hazaras; to open cases concerning genocide and human rights violations in international courts such as the ICC; to protect Hazaras in Afghanistan with international troops. We appeal to international media to investigate and report on activities against Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Open Letter from Poets World-wide with signers is available in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Hazaragi/Dari and Russian languages on www.HazaraRights.com
==========================
For more information contact Kamran Mir Hazar at email: kamran at kamranmirhazar.com and Skype: kamran.mir.hazar

Mullah Omar’s Farman to Taliban – A copy of this document (written in Pushto) was secured from Taliban’s Dept of Interior Ministry after US bombing in late 2001.The document is an order/policy by Mullah Omar to the Taliban commanders.

Mullah Omar Farman – 2001

Translation of the Pashto text (courtesy: Ishaq Mohammadi)
ISLAMIC AMARAT OF AFGHANISTAN MOVEMENT OF TALIBAN
QANDAHAR PROVINCE (SECRET SERVICE CELL).
SECRET ORDER.
1.Ruthless army steps by Taliban against opponent enemy groups.

2.Recovery of arms and collection of Islamic Taxes.

3.Demolition of Mughul,s (Hazaras) historic cultural heritage and remains.

4.Ban for celebrating of Jashn-e-Nouroz (a cultural festival/ new year)

5.Complete economic embargo of Hazarajat.

6.Strict army measures to disown Hazara tribes from their lands and properties forcibly.

7.Disintegration of Hazarajat gradually.

8.Elimination and arrest of communist elements.

9.Rooting out of all mysterious and opponent forces.

10.Anti Shiite propaganda campaign.

11.Assistance for Islamic Madrasas (religious schools) and religious groups.

12.Strict control and watch on women ( to out of their homes).

13.Complete recovery of Taxis from Opium production.

14.Care for transportations and oil.

15.Assistance of Akhund Zadas (Taliban) and religious Mullas.

16.Assistance and care for pro-Taliban Shiite Mullas and commander.

Attention for Kajiki, Kishki Nakhud, Kalat, Shah Joi, Maruf, Hlmand (Name of Provinces and Districts).

May be informed very quick.

Source & copyright

Two months after her first movie’s premiere and worldwide success, as a new director, Angelina Jolie has announced to the media that she has an idea and is writing a script on the Afghanistan Civil War.

Her debut feature, “In the Land of Blood and Honey”, a critically acclaimed movie about the civil war in the former Yugoslavia has expanded her fame as an emerging director and it proved her talent in making good movies as well in addition to be an extraordinary actress.

This new announcement seems to be good news for the people who look for justice in Afghanistan; the victims of the civil war and genocides such as Afshar Massacre.

Suffering injustice in Afghanistan even after ten years of two new governments, people are still hopeless for the transitional justice to be applied by the corrupted government of Afghanistan, but millions believe cinema as an effective medium can make their dream come true; depict the picture of committed crimes during these years which may push the war criminals to the justice courts.

Afshar Massacre, as a brutal genocide and a spot of shame in the contemporary history of Afghanistan, has caused the loss of almost 5,000 innocent people including women and children in a one-day military operation in west of Kabul in February 1993.

This evident massacre, has been recorded by different international human rights organizations and many documents including names and statistics, photos and videos of the killed and captured people are available in the HR organizations achieves.

Besides there are some documentaries available which have interviews with the remainders of the victims and their relatives that could help write a strong script based on this harsh scene of the contemporary Afghanistan History.

The result of a film on Afshar Massacre could be a Hotel Rwanda II which will not only have a humanitarian value but a critic acclaim and a box-office success for sure.

The Academy Award winner actress, Angelina Jolie is famous for her humanitarian assistances to the poor, war-torn countries as she has been a Goodwill Ambassador of the UNHCR and has so far made several trips to the countries in conflict- zone including, Afghanistan, Chad, Iraq, Libya and Sudan.

Her background as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador since 2001 has helped her gain a deep knowledge and understanding the level of sufferance the people in these war torn countries face and how many victims remain unhealed even long after the war.

Thus in her first movie as a director, she has proved to have had understood the meaning, the essence and the consequences of a civil war that is horrible and its consequences destroy even generations.

Afghanistani filmmakers and script writers would welcome Ms. Jolie to come and work on an Afshar Massacre script for her new movie in Afghanistan where she will be warmly welcomed, assisted and supported by them.

Mohammad Amin Wahidi is a Hazara filmmaker and blogger in exile (Milan – Italy)

source: kabulpress.

On the verge of the US forces withdrawal following a decade of strong presence here, Afghanistan remains unstable, with the government failing to address even some tiny security issues. Instability has grown by the increasing insurgency through new mechanisms put in practice by the resisting militants. No need to say, once the US forces are gone, the Afghan government will be highly challenged to address security dilemma in the country. Huge amounts of money, forming a bulk of the fund spent on Afghanistan, have been allocated to security sector in the country; however, less productive results have been achieved so far.

The increasing insurgency, government’s inability to take over the mission and the NATO countries’ willingness to pull back their troops have led to a severe and tense environment for Afghan nationals and the government. This doesn’t indicate denial of improvements made in building Afghan security forces. The forces have increased in terms of number but not satisfactory performance is achieved by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Analysts had previously warned that without the Western military presence, president Karzai’s government would soon collapse.

In addition to inefficient training and lack of equipment, ethnic conflicts – as researches had disclosed -, divergent decision making processes at the top security level and unsustainable funding sources, infiltration of insurgent groups inside our forces and eventually the changing militancy tactics are of the main concerns about the security job in the violence-wrecked Afghanistan. Beyond all anticipations, militants have demonstrated certain fresh means to carry out their operations.

Where the militancy in Afghanistan is directed to, will the government manage to overcome extremist misuses of events and happening and how the insurgency rate will change with the clandestine exploitation of domestic issues to promote violence, hatred and instability? The recent security events and the emerging violent trends in the country indicate that the nation will suffer further if the government fails to control the expanding covert devilish moves under the veil of public protests, tribal conflicts and domestic clashes.

The recent assaults by the heavily armed Taliban-backed nomads against local civilians in various parts of the peaceful Hazarajat clearly indicate the fact that Taliban are making use of any covert means to promote instability across the country as they utilize the open techniques. Reports confirmed that Insurgents had attacked on dozens of villages in Ghazni province, looting and torching them. Understanding the peaceful spirit of the locals in the central provinces, Taliban enter villages veiled in nomadic uniform. They also, misuse nomad tribesmen to invade areas, set homes ablaze and kill civilians.

Talking on Kuchi-veild Taliban attack on Ghazni villages, provincial council representatives said the insurgents who wore clothes similar to those of Kochis (nomads), attacked on 26 villages in Nahur district of Ghazni province. They said the insurgents clashed with ANSF in Nahur district. To address the problem, the representatives asked the Afghan government to support the ANSF in the province. Hamida Gulistani, a member of Provincial council told TOLO news “the District Police Chief and Afghan National Army (ANA) have not yet intervened in the clashes. But many villages are being set on fire by armed attackers”.

Ghazni villages are not the only targets hit by militants and armed Kuchis. There are more other areas challenged by their offensive entrance in the centre of the country.
A new dimension to the country’s troubles has emerged with reports that thousands of villagers are being forced out of their villages. This is not the beginning of such iniquitous invasions; this scourge has been happening since the early years after the interim government. However, the Kuchis enjoyed full authority to abuse the local people’s rights during Taliban regime. Last year, the district of Behsood, in the central province of Wardak, turned to a scene of devastation with dozens of burned, looted and deserted villages.

Months after the attacks in Behsood and Nahur last year left dozens of innocent civilians killed and injured, hundreds of families homeless and their products ruined, the Afghan government played down the issue. After videos leaked to media channels showing Taliban flag waving on vehicles carrying the looted furniture in Behsood, the head of the government delegation dealing with the issue said. “There is a lot of fear in Wardak but the fighting has not been heavy”. Obaidullah Sabawoon said “There have been reports by the Hazaras that schools being burned and the Taliban flag being raised but we have not found evidence of this.” However, to avoid further violence and help the civil mechanisms get enhanced in the country, hundreds of thousands of people launched peaceful demonstrations in the Capital Kabul, in the provinces and abroad. However, the peaceful protests and civil approaches in Afghanistan failed easily.

In the post-conflict countries, strengthening rule of law is of high priority and significance for the government. It can help build a stable, secure and peaceful environment to attract investment, build up economic development and thus address the basic needs of people. Citizens’ rights can only be protected and the freedom and democracy ensured when the government ensures the rule of law being implemented. In order to reinforce rule of law all over the country and leave no area and no group of the people avoiding national laws, the governments need to fight obstacles, elements and factors violating laws, causing trouble for the country and the citizens.

With a weak and fragile state, Afghanistan is suffering from several violations of national laws and the constitution. At a time when Taliban, in the south, has enhanced trouble for the citizens and challenge the government’s supremacy, factors such as Kuchis are spreading instability in the central and Northern provinces. Commissions, delegations and missions, tasked to solve the issue, have failed to put a stop to this long standing catastrophe and, once more, the local residents are seeing their properties looted, farms ruined and the houses set ablaze as result of Kuchi invasion. The government has failed to practice any of the articles issued in several presidential decrees, a clear sign indicating lack of enough sovereignty.

No need to say, the central provinces are known as the most peaceful and secure parts of the country that help security grow in other parts; the people there have pioneered the disarmament, peace building and democratization processes since the interim government was established some nine years ago.

They continued supporting the modern processes and the government policies despite inequitable distribution of aids and their lowest ratio of assistance. So, they are surely of great function in post-Taliban era in the country and deserve to be rewarded or, at least, to have their basic rights protected. Launching attacks, creating violence and destabilizing the region can directly affect the whole country’s stability as the remaining parts – central and some northern provinces – get destabilized as result of uncontrolled brutal invasions.

In addition, the government has acknowledged this horrible reality that there are masked menacing factors traveling in nomadic form of life but actually seeking for destabilization of the secure regions. To avoid further instability and retain the current fragile peace, Afghan government has to understand the danger of such anarchic offensives. The act will undoubtedly jeopardize national achievements in terms of security and peace and thus should be managed an in efficient and professional manner. The government ought to put a stop to unrestrained Nomadism in the country if it wants to promote peace, human global values and modern citizenship rights.

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This is neither the first nor the only time that the Taliban target the civilians as a result of which many Hazaras are killed so far.

Zardalo is an insecure area in Qarabagh District, Ghazni that makes the border between the Hazaras and the Pashtoons from Kaudari and Ghawmeshak areas in this district.

This area is the main juncture point for Jaghori, Malistan and Daimirdad districts with the center of the province which is lately blocked by the Taliban.

In the recent years, The Taliban has made Qarabagh District a slaughter point for the innocent Hazaras from Jaghori, Malistan and Daimirdad Districts.

A total of 2,080 or 75 percent of civilian death toll were attributed to anti-government insurgents, up 28 percent from 2009, according to the report.

The report also said that 55 percent of all the fatalities, or 1,141 deaths had been inflicted by suicide bomb attacks and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blasts.

Afghan and NATO-led forces were responsible for 440 civilian deaths or 16 percent of all the fatalities.

Other 257 or nine percent of civilian deaths were not caused by any party to the conflict, it said.

“We all know that there is no military solution to the conflict, ” said Staffan de Mistura, the head of UNAMA, at a joint press conference with Chairperson of AIHRC Sima Samar and the visiting UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic.

“We also know that everybody agrees there should be search for political solution, but now we are asking formally, strongly and firmly on behalf of Afghan people that 2011 should also see a search for the protection of civilians by all sides,” de Mistura said.

“Error and horror still produce civilian victims,” the top UN official in Afghanistan said, adding one civilian victim is too many.

“Protection of civilians in armed conflicts means protection of basic human rights such as right to life, security and freedom of movement and respect for the international humanitarian law by all parties to the conflict,” said Simonovic.

Accountability for violation of laws is the only effective way to prevent civilians from being killed or injured in the future, he emphasized.

The UN and AIHRC urged all the parties to take immediate steps to reduce civilian casualties and made 2011 the year of increasing protection of Afghan civilians, he said.

The report also called on foreign forces in Afghanistan to make their investigation and reporting on civilian casualties more transparent, maintain and strengthen directives restricting aerial attacks and the use of night raids.

Head of Afghan human right watchdog Samar said that her group is concerned over 105 percent increase in assassination that left 462 civilians dead with half of them in the country’s south where Taliban insurgents are active.

The number of children casualties rose by 21 percent while women casualties increased by six percent in conflict-ridden country, Samar added.

The top UN official de Mistura read out his messages for Taliban saying: “We know you will be saying those figures were inaccurate, but facts are facts.”

Source

The human rights community finally notices the Taliban’s war crimes.

By Christopher Hitchens

Even in a week that concentrated all eyes on the magnificent courage and maturity of the people of Cairo, a report from Kabul began with what must surely be the most jaw-dropping opening paragraph of the year. Under the byline of the excellent Rod Nordland, the New York Times reported:

International and local human rights groups working in Afghanistan have shifted their focus toward condemning abuses committed by the Taliban insurgents, rather than those attributed to the American military and its allies.

The story went on to point out that the Taliban was culpable for “more than three-fourths of all civilian casualties” and informed us that some human-rights groups are now so concerned that they are thinking of indicting the Taliban for war crimes. “The activists’ concern,” Nordland went on, “would have been unheard-of a year ago,” when all the outcry was directed at casualties inflicted by NATO contingents.

Taliban commander Mullah Mohammed Omar

The story became more mind-boggling as it unfolded. One had to ask oneself what had taken the human-rights “community” so long. After all, there are war crimes and there is the crime (established at Nuremburg) of planning to wage aggressive war. The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in the first place by indiscriminate violence, played host to al-Qaida forces that murdered several thousand civilians in one day on American soil, and for almost a decade has been employing systematic cruelty against civilians and fighting an undeclared war, without uniforms or formal command structure, against a force that is upholding a U.N. mandate for the rebuilding of the country. Moreover, during its period in power, it ran the country as a vast concentration camp, enslaving the female population and conducting a campaign of extermination against the Hazara minority. How is it possible to mention this enormity in the same breath as the forces that are opposed to it?

The turning point, in the mind of the human rights “activists,” appears to have occurred in late January, when a Taliban suicide-murderer killed at least 14 civilians in the Finest Supermarket in Kabul. Among the slain was a well-known local campaigner named Hamida Barmaki, whose husband and four small children were also killed. One wonders in what sense this was the Taliban going too far—women are killed and mutilated by them every single day in Afghanistan. Yet let the terror reach one of the upscale markets or hotels that cater to the NGO constituency in Kabul, and suddenly there is an abrupt change from moral neutrality.

Perhaps it is fortunate for the Taliban that they take few, if any, prisoners and maintain no places of detention—at least they don’t have to face the righteous scrutiny of those who (like Amnesty International and Julian Assange) have seriously compared Guantanamo to the Gulag. Moreover, their refusal of any military discipline makes it hard if not impossible to distinguish their corpses from others who may have been killed in an airstrike. And can you imagine a Taliban fighter being disciplined by his “superiors” for murder, or demoted for lack of care toward the local population, as has happened several times with U.S. officers and soldiers? In a striking instance of the compliment that vice pays to virtue, sadistic Mullah Mohammed Omar, former dictator of Afghanistan and now Taliban commander, attempted to issue a “code of conduct” to his supporters in 2009. This was supposed to warn against the killing of innocents but seems only to have incited further brutality and the use of ever-more-random methods.

However, is it possible to imagine Mullah Omar going even that far if the NATO forces were not in the country to begin with? Plainly, he must have heard at least indirectly from elements of the local population (he appears to have his base across the Pakistani border in Quetta) that there is some perceptible difference between opening a clinic and destroying it; between starting a village school for girls and setting it on fire or hurling acid in the faces of the pupils; between guarding polling booths and visiting villagers at night to intimidate them not to vote.

I’ll concede that something remotely like the same is true of NATO’s previous over-reliance on airstrikes and infliction of consequent damage. After representations from the Afghan authorities, those rules of engagement have been amended. And indeed, American soldiers are under instructions to risk their own lives rather than to err on the side of anything resembling indiscriminate ground fire. (One sometimes wishes those same Afghan authorities were more deserving of the sacrifices that are made on their behalf.) But learning from previous misapplied tactics is altogether different from persisting with random suicide-murder, roadside bombs aimed at the most vulnerable, deliberate targeting of females, and the other elements of the Taliban armory.

I can only too well remember attending some press conferences in Pakistan in the winter of 2001 and seeing the unbearably smug expressions on the faces of various human rights and “relief” spokesmen who were concerned lest the military operation against the Taliban should disrupt their relatively modest efforts. They failed or refused to see that the removal of the Taliban was a necessary precondition of any serious relief and reconstruction. It’s heartening to learn that, almost a decade later, they are at least open to the awareness that the Taliban is the worst offender. The next stage—may it come soon—will be the realization that the Taliban does not “violate” human rights, but entirely lacks the concept of their existence.

Source

It was a bone-chillingly cold morning, she recalls, when militia loyal to Pashtun warlord Abdul Rab-Rasoul Sayyaf – now a parliamentarian – captured her village, west of Kabul and dominated by ethnic Hazaras.

Poverty-stricken Afshar, a complex of mudbrick houses at the foot of a barren and rocky mountain, was crushed in the orgy of murder, rape and looting.

In a post-assault attack on the village, gunmen smashed into her simple house, says the illiterate housewife in her 40s. They demanded a gold ring she was wearing.

“I couldn’t take it off. One of them stepped forward with a bayonet and said ‘I will take it off,’ and chopped my fingers,” she says, holding up a hand missing the thumb, fore and middle fingers.

Her son Samad cried out. “When he chopped my fingers, my son jumped towards me and wailed ‘Oh, nanai (mother)’. Another man turned his gun and fired at him,” she says, her lips quivering. “My son died in my arms,” she says, wiping away tears with the palm of her butchered hand.

The number of dead in what has become known as the Afshar Massacre is not clear: a United Nations report says 300 civilians, almost all ethnic Hazara Shiites, were killed but villagers say even more were slaughtered, some decapitated.

Hundreds of Hazara men were rounded up and corralled into forced labour – or just disappeared. Villagers claim 1,200 men were taken away.

One was Marzia’s husband, Sayed Mohammad.

Sitting near his wife in their one-room home, he says he was accused of being a combatant, beaten, and forced to dig trenches and wash dishes for his captors for six months before he was freed, half-paralysed and mentally ill.

The February 1993 Afshar campaign was one of the worst episodes of the 1992-1996 civil war that erupted when internationally supported militias that had driven out the Soviet occupiers turned on each other.

The ethnic-based factional fighting – in which all sides are accused of atrocities, including the Hazara – killed around 80,000 civilians in Kabul alone, according to rights groups.

An almost daily barrage of rocket and artillery fire reduced large parts of the attractive capital to rubble.

The conflict was ended when the Taliban Islamic militia took power in 1996, initially welcomed for restoring calm after the chaos. But they too brought terror before being ousted in a US-led invasion late in 2001.

“The Afshar Massacre is one of the worst brutalities of the civil war,” says Horia Musadeq from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

“It is just one example of hundreds of incidents Afghans suffered. Hundreds of civilians were killed, women were raped and many men were captured, held and tortured,” he said.

A 2005 Human Rights Watch report implicates Sayyaf – now an ally of President Hamid Karzai – and other figures such as Burhanduddin Rabbani, president at the time and now also in parliament.

“The Afshar campaign was marked by widespread and serious violations of international humanitarian law,” it says, and calls for “justice-seeking mechanisms to sideline past abusers from political power”.

Karzai in late 2006 signed a Peace, Reconciliation and Justice Action Plan that seeks to “establish accountability” – which some fear could see a backlash from strongmen worried about having to face a judicial process.

Just weeks later the parliament voted in a bill that would give groups and factions amnesty against prosecution. Its position on individuals is vague.

Karzai admitted at a meeting in December, at which Marzia was among several victims who pleaded for justice, that this was a concern.

“There are tyrants in our land,” he said. “We must move with lots of caution so as not to cause lots of noise and more human rights violations.”

The United Nations has meanwhile expressed disappointment at the delays in implementing the action plan, which also provides for investigations of atrocities and memorials for those killed.

Marzia says she wants justice, even if only from “great God”.

Responding to such calls is vital for Afghanistan to recover from its three decades of war and to revive the national spirit, Musadeq says.

“We can’t survive as a nation unless we give justice to war victims. Can you imagine that those who have killed her or others’ children sit in the parliament, live in palaces and drive Landcruisers?” she asks.

“When Sayyaf speeds past a victim in his Landcruiser, kicking up dust, think how it feels. It feels really bad.”

http://hazaranation.blogspot.com

Date: February 1993

Location: Afshar and Karteh Se, West Kabul. Majority of Hazara residents. (central Afghanistan – Hazarajat).

Victims: Innocent Hazara residents of Afshar and Karteh Se and members of the Hezb-e-Wahdat (Unity Party) who defended the Hazara people and fought for equal rights.

Perpetrators: Then former President Rabbani, his chief military commander and son-in-law, the so-called “lion of Panjshir” Ahmad Shah Massoud (both from Jamiat-i-Islami political group who participated in the murders) and Abdul Rasul with his political party, Ittehad-i-Islami.

* “…hundreds of its Hazara residents were massacred by government forces, under the direct order of President Rabbani and his cheif commander, Massoud.”"At one o’clock on the morning of 11 February, while the inhabitants of Afshar lay asleep in their beds, the Institute of Social Sciences was attacked from three sides: from the west by Sayyaf’s Ittehad-e-Islami forces, and from the north and south, by Rabbani’s forces, helped by traitors within the Party, who had already been bought off.”

“Following this withdrawal, forces loyal to Sayyaf and Ahmad Shah Massoud raided the area. For the next 24 hours they killed, raped, set fire to homes, and took young boys and girls as captives. By the time the news was broadcast in Kabul and internationally the following day, some 700 people were estimated to have been killed or to have disappeared. One year later, when parts of the district were retaken by Hezb-e-Wahdat forces, several mass graves were unearthed containing a further 58 bodies…”
(S.A. Mousavi: The Hazaras of Afghanistan )

Hence, Human Rights Watch reported that civilians had their throats slit and leg or arm cut off. More than 1,000 were killed and/or disappeared.

Leaders of the Massacre: “Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a current U.S. ally, was among the mujahedeen leaders in power in Afghanistan- the ones who welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996 from Sudan, where he had been forced to leave under U.S. pressure. Sayyaf, whose men carried out brutal atrocities during the mujahedeen’s rule, was a close ally of Ahmed Shah Massoud, on the rights in this photograph, whose men also carried out brutal acts.”

Headline:
* According to The Guardian, November 16, 2001:

On February 11, 1993, Massoud and Sayyaf’s forces entered the Hazara suburb of Afshar, killing – by local accounts – “up to 1,000 civilians”, beheading old men, women, children and even their dogs, stuffing their
bodies down the wells.
* According to Los Angeles Times (Apr.26,1999) “In one terrible incident in 1993, documented by the State Department, Masoud’s troops rampaged through a rival neighborhood, raping, looting and killing as many as a thousand people.”

* “nternational responsibility for human rights disaster”, (AI, 1995) In March 1995 Shura-e-Nezar forces reportedly carried out raids on hundreds of civilian homes in Kabul’s south-western district of Karte Se, killing or beating whole families, looting property and raping Hazara women. One family, interviewed by a foreign journalist in Kabul, said President Rabbani’s soldiers had told them they wanted to “drink the blood of the Hazaras”. Medical workers in the area confirmed at the time at least six incidents of rape and two attempted rapes, but believed the actual number was much higher.

* Human Rights Watch, (October 10, 2001)”In March 1995, Massoud [Defence Minister at that time] forces were responsible for rape and looting after they seized control of Kabul’s predominantly Hazara neighborhood of Karte Seh.
On the night of Feb. 11, 1993, the Massoud and Sayyaf forces conducted a raid in west Kabul, killing Hazara civilians and committing widespread rape. Estimates of fatalities range from 70 to more than 100.

According to The Guardian, November 16, 2001: “On February 11, 1993, Massoud and Sayyaf’s forces entered the Hazara suburb of Afshar, killing – by local accounts – “up to 1,000 civilians”, beheading old men, women, children and even their dogs, stuffing their bodies down the wells.”

February 14, 1993: A Hazara woman with her child recounts how her husband was killed in Afshar, west Kabul by forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud and Sayyaf.

Victims: Innocent Hazara residents of Afshar and Karteh Sahe and members of the Hezb-e-Wahdat (Unity Party) who defended the Hazara people and fought for equal rights.

Date: February 1993

Perpetrators: Then former President Rabbani, his chief military commander and son-in-law, the so-called “lion of Panjshir” Ahmad Shah Massoud (both from Jamiat-i-Islami political group who participated in the murders) and Abdul Rasul with his political party, Ittehad-i-Islami.

Location: Afshar and Karteh Sahe, West Kabul. Majority of Hazara residents.

Details:
“…hundreds of Hazara residents were massacred by government forces, under the direct order of President Rabbani and his cheif commander, Massoud.”

“At one o’clock on the morning of 11 February, while the inhabitants of Afshar lay asleep in their beds, the Institute of Social Sciences was attacked from three sides: from the west by Sayyaf’s Ittehad-e-Islami forces, and from the north and south, by Rabbani’s forces, helped by traitors within the Party, who had already been bought off.”

“Following this withdrawal, forces loyal to Sayyaf and Ahmad Shah Massoud raided the area. For the next 24 hours they killed, raped, set fire to homes, and took young boys and girls as captives. By the time the news was broadcast in Kabul and internationally the following day, some 700 people were estimated to have been killed or to have disappeared. One year later, when parts of the district were retaken by Hezb-e-Wahdat forces, several mass graves were unearthed containing a further 58 bodies…”

Hence, Human Rights Watch reported that civilians had their throats slit and leg or arm cut off. More than 1,000 were killed and/or disappeared.

“Before the Afshar massacre of Hazaras civilians in 1993, jihadi leader Ahmad Shah Masoud and Abdul Rasool Sayyaf told his officers, “Don’t leave anyone alive — kill all of them.”

Read this report on Rawa.org click here

Read This report on BBC.com click here