Monthly Archives: March 2018

The Holocaust of the Hazaras and Canada’s “right side of history” polic

The overwhelming question for the millions of Hazaras living in segregation and on borrowed time, is when will the peace-loving and human rights champion Canada actually place itself on the right side of history in Afghanistan, writes Ali Mirzad.

On 23rd July 2016 in Kabul a terrorist attack on a peaceful Hazara protest killed 89 people and wounded more than 400 others.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, when Canada decided to enter the chaotic Afghan war arena, it did so primarily in a show of solidarity to its neighbour, ally and number-one trading partner, the United States. Our then Prime Minister Jean Chretien offered Canada’s full support to the cause, in order to be “On the Right Side of History.”

Since the beginning of our engagement, more than 40,000 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members have deployed to Afghanistan, many being deployed more than once, making the military engagement this nation’s largest foreign involvement since World War II. Seventeen years later, with billions of tax-payers dollars donated to Afghanistan, 158 CAF casualties and thousands wounded—and that country remains infested with widespread corruption and systematic human rights violations. Canadians ought to ask themselves if we are in fact “On the Right Side of History,” in Afghanistan.

The Hazaras of Afghanistan, a distinct ethno-cultural group that over the years have seen their population methodically exterminated, certainly do not think so! The Hazaras—once the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan, constituting nearly 67 per cent of the total population of the state before the 19th century—have been the victims of a systematic ethnic cleansing and have endured inconceivable atrocities. Firstly by the 19th century Pashtun ruler Abdur Rahman Khan that indiscriminately massacred their men and sold the women and children to slavery. Then at the hands of the savage warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf that …read more

From:: Hazara People