The Hazara – along with the security forces – are the main victims of attacks by Sunni extremists

In the light of today’s terrorist attack against Shiites in Kabul, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) would like to point out the particular threat to the Shiite Hazara in Afghanistan. “Due to the attacks of the Sunni terrorists of Islamic State (IS), the situation of the Hazara people is a living hell. Hardly a week passes without terrorist attacks against the Shiite minority. In recent months, the Hazara – along with soldiers and policemen – have become the main victims of Islamist violence in Afghanistan,” explained Ulrich Delius, the STP’s director, in Göttingen on Wednesday. In March 2018 alone, there were three terrorist attacks against the population group of the Hazara in Kabul. In 2017, at least 315 Hazara lost their lives in attacks by Sunni extremists in Afghanistan. Today, on occasion of the Persian New Year, at least 29 people were killed and 52 people were injured in an attack on a group of people waiting in front of a Shiite shrine in a residential district of the Hazara in Kabul.

“The Federal Government must take the particular threat to the Shiite minority into account in its new report on the situation in Afghanistan – which we are currently waiting for,” Delius demanded. The publication of the new situation report of the German Federal Government, which was planned for October 2017, is still pending.

Only last Sunday, eleven students were injured in a suicide attack on a private school, the Kawsar School, in a residential area of the Hazara in Kabul. The assassin had tried to blow himself up in a classroom with 600 students. Before he could activate his explosive belt, however, the assassin was killed by a hand grenade. The school has 15,000 pupils – both boys and girls.

Another ten Hazara died on March 9, 2018, when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a queue outside the security checkpoint of an event of the minority group in Kabul – and 22 people were injured in the attack, some seriously. The Hazara had gathered to commemorate the assassination of their traditional leader Abdul Ali Mazari by the Taliban in 1995.

IS has taken responsibility for today’s attack and for the other recent terrorist attacks against the Shiites. The Sunni extremists are accusing the Shiites of falling away from the true faith, and their attacks are supposed to stir up tensions between Sunnis and Shiites.

Header Photo: ABC Open Riverland via Flickr