Kabul, January 05: Sidelined for years by the dominant Pashtun tribes, ethnic Afghan Hazaras are now using education to regain influence in the central Asian Muslim country.
“The Pashtun had the opportunities in the past,” Mustafa, a Hazara teenager, told.
“But now the Hazaras have these opportunities.”
The 16-year-old had fled Afghanistan into the Pakistani town of Quetta when the Taliban took control of the country in the 1990s.
But after the Taliban ouster by the 2001 US invasion, Mustafa’s family returned to Kabul to get better schooling for their son.
Mustafa, an 11th grader who wants to study nuclear physics at a Western university, is now a top student at Marefat High School in Kabul.
“We can take our rights just by education.”
Overwhelmingly Shiite Muslims, with a Sunni minority, Hazaras are the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
They are also found in large numbers in neighboring Pakistan, especially in the city of Quetta, and in Iran, mainly as refugees.
Hazaras have long complained of being sidelined by the dominant Pashtun tribes.
“The Hazara always wanted an open atmosphere to breathe,” said Mohammed Sarwar Jawadi, a Hazara member of Parliament from Bamian Province.
“And now we have that.”
Growing Influence
Many Hazaras say that education is their way to alter the balance of power in Afghanistan.
“With education you can take everything you want,” said Qasim, 15, one of Mustafa’s classmates at the Marefat school.
He said old Afghan rulers “wanted to exploit Hazara people.”
“They didn’t want us to become leaders in this country or to improve.”
Now, Hazaras are achieving the highest school enrolment rates in Afghanistan.
Two Hazara-dominated provinces of Daykondi and Bamian have the highest passing rates on admissions exams for top universities.
Hazara women are also making high rates of literacy.
In Bamian, girl enrolment rates hit one-third in the past two years, compared to only 22 percent nationwide.
Total enrolment in Daykondi rose almost 40 percent to 156,000 over the past two years, and girls now make up 43 percent of students.
More Hazara girls also passed the entrance exam for Afghanistan’s top-rung universities in 2008 than from 10 mainly Pashtun provinces combined.
Western offices in Kabul now have many college-educated Hazaras, including women.
Hazaras have also flooded the security forces, and now are a disproportionate fraction of soldiers, while Pashtun representation continues to lag.
“It will be very difficult for them (Pashtun) to see that a new generation is coming,” said Aziz Royesh, director of the Marefat school.
“Now they cannot use the force of government to prevent specific people from getting their civil rights and their human rights.”
Qasim, the Marefat school student, is determined to have a different future from his parents.
“By studying we can dictate our future.”
-Agencies