“Abducted Hazara passengers have been released,” that is the first thing I saw on my Facebook news feed on Sunday. A wave of happiness travelled throughout my soul and body as I thought 30 Hazara passengers who were abducted last month in Zabul province of Afghanistan have been rescued. Nonetheless, the feeling vanished as I went into detail of the update. It was about 10 other Hazaras who had been kidnapped by Taliban earlier that day. They were released but had been brutally tortured.
The thirty-one Hazaras are still in captivity of terrorists! More than three weeks since their abduction have passed but still there is clue about their whereabouts. These Hazaras had just been repatriated from Islamic Republic of Iran and were on their way from Herat to Kabul when their buses were stopped in Zabul, one of the volatile provinces in southern Afghanistan by unknown gunmen who communicated in a foreign language. They took the Hazaras with themselves after singling them out.
The Kabul-Kandahar highway which further stretches to Herat offers an appalling example of destruction caused by Taliban to Afghanistan’s already underdeveloped infrastructure. Bomb explosions, clashes between Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and Taliban, beheading and kidnapping are common and frequent incidents that take place along this route.
In other words, Taliban have a great influence over provinces like Wardak, Ghazni, Zabul and Kandahar through which the highway passes. Neither ISAF nor have the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) been able to break their influence. This could be one of the major reasons for why the Afghan intelligence and security forces have failed to locate the Hazara abductees.
Is ISIS involved in the abduction? Afghan local officials have repeatedly expressed their concerns over growing presence of ISIS in southern provinces. Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) said in a statement last month that Abdul Rauf, ISIS chief in southern Afghanistan who had also been a Taliban commander and had spent several years in Gitmo Bay, has been killed along with his five companions in Sadat village of Kajaki district of Helmand province. Despite that it is believed that ISIS has not been dismantled in Afghanistan and it has been able to recruit Taliban fighters into its ranks and white flags of Taliban are being replaced by black ones of ISIS. There are doubts that ISIS has kicked off its operations in Afghanistan by abducting 31 members of Hazara tribe, majority of which practice Shia Islam.
Based on a report published on The Express Tribune on March 15, 2015, Haji Muhammad Mohaqiq, a prominent Hazara leader who is also deputy chief executive officer in National Unity Government has said that he has sent negotiators to Pakistani cities of Quetta and Karachi to secure release of the Hazaras. Nonetheless, it remains vague with whom the negotiations will take place.
Formerly, some Afghan authorities had blamed Pakistani-based terror group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) for the abduction. LeJ, a fiercely anti-Shia outfit, has been involved in killing over 1,500 Hazaras in and around Quetta city of Pakistan over the past years.
The group might have extended its area of operation to target Hazaras in Afghanistan with assistance from Taliban and foreign terrorists operating in Afghanistan. In 2011, about 80 people mostly Shias were killed and hundreds were injured on Ashura Day in a series of terror attacks in Kabul, Mazar e Sharif and Kandahar cities of Afghanistan. The attack in Kabul was the bloodiest one as it took lives of 70 innocent people including women and children. Then, LeJ had taken responsibility for the attack.
Whether these Hazaras have been abducted by ISIS, Taliban, LeJ or any other terror group, it is the foremost responsibility of Afghan government to recover them! Despite public protests in various parts of Afghanistan, the government seems not be acting as it must.
The silence of National Unity Government over the issue is disappointing for the Hazara nation that enthusiastically voted in the last presidential election in the hope for a better, secure and discrimination-free tomorrow. Hazaras have always been the greatest supporters of peace, harmony and democracy in Afghanistan. But their agony seems be taking forever to end as they still face systematic genocide, beheading, abduction and discrimination just because of their ethnicity and religious belief.
As a Hazara who has travelled and risked his life by travelling on the Kabul-Kandahar highway for many times over the last few years - not because I was adventurous but because I was compelled – I can imagine what pain my family would go through if I had been lost or abducted as these 30 Hazaras. The senselessness of Afghan authorities including the Hazara leaders is weakening the hope and trust of the families who are awaiting safe return of their beloved ones.