Since the forces of Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum, backed by the Shia Muslim Hizb-e-Wahadat, took Mazar after fierce fighting last week, there have been troubling reports of massacres, looting and reprisal killings. The UN says many of its offices have been gutted by looters. A UN humanitarian spokesman in Islamabad said last Thursday that at least 100 young Pakistani volunteers gathered in a school had been massacred as Dostum's men advanced. Other UN sources say hundreds of people—Taliban and suspected collaborators among local Pashtoons—have been killed in the city. There are also reports of infighting among anti-Taliban forces as struggle over how to divide the spoils of victory begins.
NA officials deny these reports or dismiss them as exaggerated. "We are in complete control and the people are happy to see us," said a military aid to Gen Dostum. But people in Mazar can't say the same so blithely. Uzbeks and Tajiks are undoubtedly pleased to see the Taliban forces chased out of town. Ditto the Hazaras who have suffered mightily from the bigoted anti-Shia Taliban. But there are bloody scores being settled in newly-liberated Mazar now.
After the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, they turned their attention to northern and northwestern Afghanistan. Herat, near the Iranian border, fell after a relatively bloodless conquest. Mazar-e-Sharif was a tougher nut to crack. Dostum's men—feared, even reviled outside Uzbek areas for their ruthlessness—stood firm. It all changed in May 1997, when two of Dostum's military deputies rebelled and invited the Taliban into Mazar. Thousands of turbaned, bearded Pashtoons poured into the ancient city named after the blue-domed tomb of the founder of Shi'ite Islam, Hazart Ali. Within months, there was fierce street-to-street fighting as dissident Dostum forces and guerillas from the Hazara population turned on the Talibs. More than 3,000 were massacred in the bloodiest possible ways. Some were thrown into wells and grenades hurled in afterwards. Others were put in metal shipping containers and left to die of thirst on the scorching plains outside the city. Some containers were blasted by tanks. Many senior Taliban commanders were killed.
The Taliban got their revenge in July of 1998 when they retook Mazar. They vented their fury on the city's Hazara population, killing several thousands and nearly provoking war with Iran by murdering nine of Teheran's diplomats based in Mazar. Memories of that carnage are probably behind the reported violence in the area today.
No group in Afghanistan suffered more from Taliban bigotry than the Hazaras. Not just in Mazar but in their home territory of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, thousands of Shias are believed to have been wiped out—a statistic confirmed by Hazara refugees in Pakistan."We hate them more than anyone," said Karim Wahidi, who fled from Bamiyan to Quetta two years ago."They deserve what happens to them".
Perhaps, but talk of a peaceful, multi-ethnic Afghanistan has to be seen as premature in the face of score-settling among the communities.
