Thousands protest at Afghan ethnic killings
Spy agency frees 8 kidnap victims
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Nov 10, (Agencies): Around 2,000 members of Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic minority held an angry protest on Tuesday after militants killed seven members of their community at the weekend and dumped their partially beheaded bodies.
The killing of the seven Hazara, including three women and two children, during fighting between rival Taleban factions and Islamic State sympathisers, highlighted the risk that worsening sectarianism could add a lethal twist to daily violence sweeping Afghanistan.
The mainly Shia Hazaras have long suffered ill-treatment and persecution in Afghanistan, with thousands massacred by al-Qaeda and Taleban militias in the 1990s.
This year, a series of kidnappings and murders of Hazara fuelled fears that the group was being deliberately targeted, and the latest killings in the southern province of Zabul triggered a furious wave of reaction on social media.
In a sign of anger among the Hazara, the bodies of the dead were taken to Ghazni, a city in central Afghanistan with a large Hazara community, where crowds marched to the provincial governor’s compound in protest.
Bearing the coffins of the dead aloft and chanting slogans against the Taleban, Islamic State and the government in Kabul, the crowd demanded punishment for the killers.
“We ask the government to find the reason behind this serial killing of Hazaras in Afghanistan and bring the perpetrators to justice,” Ghulam Ali, a protester, said.
Since the killings of the 1990s, the Taleban has largely avoided specifically targeting Hazaras or Shia Muslims, but the rise in the number of fighters claiming allegiance to the even more hardline Islamic State movement may change that.
Afghanistan is divided among a patchwork of ethnic groups, including Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Turkmen, mainly in the north and west, as well as Pashtun, the largest single group, located mainly in the south and east.
While sectarian violence has regularly broken out in the past, it has not been a major feature of the fighting in recent years and any resurgence would add a dangerous new complication for the government of President
Ghani
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s spy agency freed eight people who were among a large group of ethnic minority Hazaras kidnapped earlier this year, the agency said on Tuesday.
The five men, two women and a teenager were freed Tuesday in Ghazni province, the National Directorate of Security said in a statement.
The NDS said they were among 31 Hazaras abducted earlier this year, but gave no further details.
A group of 31 Hazaras, believed at the time to be men, were forced off buses in Ghazni in February. Of the abductees, 19 were freed in May and the rest remain unaccounted for.
Senior government officials said at the time that the Islamic State group was behind the abductions. The NDS statement made no comment on who was responsible, referring only to “terrorists.”
Hazaras, who are predominantly Shiite, have been targeted in several large-scale kidnappings this year, prompting demonstrations and sit-ins in the capital Kabul and elsewhere.
The beheaded bodies of seven Hazaras were found in Zabul, neighboring Ghazni, on Saturday. The four men, two women and a child had been kidnapped up to six months ago, officials said.
The NDS dismissed Taleban claims that IS was responsible for the beheadings. Rival Taleban factions have been fighting in the region for days.
The bodies were being transported from Ghazni to Kabul, ahead of a demonstration planned for Wednesday near the presidential palace, according to an organizer, Daud Naji.
About 100 people gathered in a Kabul park on Tuesday demanding a day of mourning for the Zabul victims.
President Ashraf Ghani condemned the killings and vowed to track down the perpetrators.
As fighting between Taleban factions continued for a fourth day in Zabul, officials said the two sides appeared to be using suicide bombers against each other.
The two Taleban factions are split over the question of the extremist group’s leadership. Mullah Akhtar Mansoor was declared the new leader in July after it was announced that Taleban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar has been dead for at least two years. But a breakaway Taleban faction is backing Mullah Mohammad Rasool, and both Rasool’s faction and Afghan officials say that loyalists to the Islamic State group are siding with Rasool’s fighters.