I am doing my research project on the persecution of an ethnic minority group in Afghanistan and Pakistan named the Hazaras. For decades, these war-inflicted nations have been zones of internal conflict in addition to the overall greater war that’s affected the country as a whole. With this research project, I am hoping to discover the complex history behind the Hazara people in order to learn more about why they have been targeted in the past and continue to be so today. I hope to discover more about how a national war can spark inter-ethnic hostilities and essentially create a war a war amongst the fellow countrymen. I am interested in learning about what led to what is now called the Hazara genocide. Asides from looking a little different and being from the Shia minority sect, what exactly sparked the exclusion of Hazaras in Afghan society? What caused this divide between the historically dominant “Pashtun” group and the Hazaras—a conflict that is made evident in Khalid Hosseini’s award-winning novel, The Kite Runner? Why has the Hazara struggle been ignored and silenced by civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan? How is this hostility preventing advancement in these nations? Who is to blame—the Taliban? Afghan government leaders? Civilians? Why has this massacre continued even in today’s supposed progressive day and age? What has been done in an effort to stop these senseless killings and raise awareness about the struggles these people are forced to endure every single day? I am dedicated to finding answers to these questions and more upon doing this project.
I am expecting to conclude this project with greater insight on this ethnic minority group that has been a victim of a double war—a war against their nation by outsiders and a war against them by people inside their own nation. I am also hopeful that I will learn more about the overall reasoning behind why certain groups are targeted by the supposed “dominant” ethnic/racial groups in society—which has historically sparked many wars.
Image: Hazaras gather to protest centuries of targeted killings
In conducting my research, I know I will encounter some challenges because this is a topic that has not been extensively covered in the past. It may be difficult to find first-hand accounts of the Hazara struggle from the Hazara community because Hazaras are so frequently silenced. I may also find it challenging to interpret some of the primary sources like “The Kite Runner” and a set of colorful drawings depicting massacres of Hazara people because they may not depict the Hazara perspective. Nevertheless, I plan on using these main primary sources and many secondary sources like scholarly journals, articles, and historical data in gathering information about this marginalized groups brutal battle. I plan on and hope to connect this topic to the topics of war that we have covered this past year in HumCore including some themes such as “witnesses of war,” “mediation of truth,” and “representing war,” and “cost of war.” I also wish to compare how the Hazara plight relates to the atrocities committed against other marginalized groups throughout history that we studied in HumCore including the Jews and African Americans. By connecting these themes and past events to this topic, I want to delineate how the overall nature of war is very similar worldwide regardless of the geographical location. I want to show how war is brutal and undeniably produces atrocious consequences. I can do so by working hard to discover more about this targeted ethnic group that represents the sickening nature of wars between natives of the same nation and hopefully by doing so, I can raise awareness about these victims of war that have unfortunately been neglected by most of the world.
War: Through the Eyes of Humans 
It is now Saturday, May 14, and I am at the stage of collecting more secondary sources that will help me analyze the Hazara persecution and my primary source. I have a lot of data on the historical and political nature of the Hazara struggle, but I still need to look for more sources that are testimonials from Hazaras who have faced violence and subordination in and outside of Afghanistan. I also want to look for sources that are analyzing and/or reviewing my primary source, which is Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”. I am also thinking about ways to utilize both the novel and movie version of “The Kite Runner” in order to see how they mediate the Hazara persecution differently and whether one spends more time highlighting the problem. Thus, by incorporating the movie and putting it in dialogue with the novel, I should find secondary sources that also analyze the movie as this will help me delve deeper into the film’s way of portraying how the Hazara have been treated in society. In addition, I am trying to figure out how to use the drawings of the Hazaras being persecuted in public spheres. I’m not sure if I should also use them as a primary source or as a secondary source. Once, I figure out how exactly to incorporate the drawings, then I can start working on connecting all of my sources.
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I have completed the annotated bibliography, prospectus, and rough draft and after meeting with Dr. Morse during office hours, I feel like I am confident in the direction that my paper is going. I am hoping to incorporate more connections to the themes we focused on in HumCore in the final draft because I feel like I could have done more of that in my rough draft. I am still trying to figure out where and how to embed those connections in my paper so that everything flows. I will look at my peer review response letter that Eriel wrote for my paper and have one last office hour meeting with Dr. Morse and I hope that this will further help me in determining how to connect to the HumCore themes and help me in making improvements on the sources I used and the analysis I conducted if they need improvement.
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