Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity Among Afghan Hazaras Melissa S
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University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 12-15-2016 Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity among Afghan Hazaras Melissa S. Kerr Chiovenda University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Kerr Chiovenda, Melissa S., "Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity among Afghan Hazaras" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 1324. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1324 Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity among Afghan Hazaras Melissa Kerr Chiovenda, PhD University of Connecticut, 2016 Based on 18 months of fieldwork in Bamyan and West Kabul, Afghanistan among ethnic Hazara civil society activists, I examine civil society groups’ protests and memorialization activities as social and political acts of collective and cultural trauma generation and dissemination. The activists’ protests seek to secure greater rights, security and infrastructural development in Hazara populated areas, and memorialize past rights violations and atrocities against Hazaras. Through protests, literature and social media, the retelling of traumatic events inculcates and spreads collective trauma. And the framing of these past events as a present existential threat merges with a widespread sense that Hazara history and culture have been quietly erased by a Pashtun-dominated Afghan state apparatus. Both the constant recounting of collective traumas and the perception of having been excluded from Afghan history and history-writing confirm a need to write and speak about the Hazara past through frames specific to Hazaras’ victimization., including an ongoing genocide which began over 100 years ago. Hazara activist history-telling also draws on Bamyan’s ancient past, to make a claim to their being Afghanistan’s autochthonous people as well as heirs to cosmopolitan, religiously tolerant and non-violent Buddhist and Silk Road traditions. Yet the ancient past is also depicted as having been traumatic, in that the early ancestors of the Hazaras are held to have suffered under Muslim and Mongol invaders. Affective and symbolic echoes of Shi’a traditions of martyrdom and victimization are also to be found in Hazara protest and memorialization. Layered on top of all this is language appealing to a Western audience, giving emphasis to Hazaras’ purportedly inherent peacefulness and their recent embrace of human rights and genocide recognition. Hazara activists express a Hazara exceptionalism based on the idea that their people are particular to Afghanistan as an autochthonous group mixed with later migrations and different religious groups which thrived on the Silk Road and are hence imbued with a peacefulness and cosmopolitanism others lack. They provide as evidence a mix of written and mythological historical sources. Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity among Afghan Hazaras Melissa Kerr Chiovenda B.A., Georgetown University, 2001 M.A., Georgetown University, 2009 M.A., University of Connecticut, 2012 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2016 i Copyright By Melissa Kerr Chiovenda 2016 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity among Afghan Hazaras Presented by Melissa Kerr Chiovenda, B.A, M.A. Major Advisor _________________________________________________________________ Samuel Martinez Associate Adviser_______________________________________________________________ Kathryn Libal Associate Adviser_______________________________________________________________ Sarah Willen Associate Adviser_______________________________________________________________ Thomas Barfield Associate Adviser_______________________________________________________________ Richard Wilson Associate Adviser_______________________________________________________________ César Abadía-Barrero University of Connecticut 2016 iii Acknowledgements I would like to sincerely thank all those who made the research and completion of this dissertation possible. First, I must thank those people in Afghanistan, Hazara and non-Hazara, the residents of Bamyan, West Kabul, and beyond, who gave their time and energy to help me understand their lives and the reality of Afghanistan today. I also must thank the many diaspora Hazaras all over the world who have assisted me. Particular thanks to Burhani Alizada and Ahmad Azizy are in order for spending long hours assisting me in translations of books, articles, songs, videos, and speeches. To my adviser, Sam Martinez, I am extremely grateful, as he listened through my thought process and guided me in helping me make sense of this particular social movement in Afghanistan. My committee members Kathryn Libal and Thomas Barfield provided key insights for understanding the Islamic world and Afghanistan in particularl. And to my committee members Sarah Willen, Richard Wilson, and César Abadía-Barrero I am very grateful for meaningful guidance. I would also like to thank Adam Kuper, who provided valuable feedback during the long writing process, and who kept me in line and honest! My husband Andrea has been with me every step of the way. I first went to Afghanistan with him, and we have always traveled, researched, written, and discussed ideas together. He is truly my partner in every way. Finally, I must mention my daughter Aurelia. I knew I had to complete this to provide for her an example of a strong woman who follows her dreams, and her joy kept me going when the writing process became overwhelming. iv Cultural Trauma, History Making, and the Politics of Ethnic Identity Among afghan Hazaras Table of Contents 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………1 2. Bamyan: A Land of Peace and a Land of Conflict…………………………………41 3. Cultural Trauma Among Hazara Civil Society Activists…………………………...80 4. Who Are Hazara Civil Society Activists?..................................................................122 Relations with Local, National, and International Political Institutions 5. Shi’ism: History, Activism, and Iran………………………………………………..163 6. The Afshar Massacre as a Collective Memory Event……………………………….197 7. Mazari: The Martyr of the Hazaras………………………………………………….223 8. Activists’ Interpretation of Hazara and Activist History…………………………….266 9. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………307 v Chapter One An Introduction to Cultural Trauma In this dissertation, I present research on civil society (joma’e maidani) activists, from the Hazara ethnicity, living in Afghanistan. My main goal is to demonstrate the ways, and the methods used by, these activists, mainly within Hazara communities, to spread particular narratives of collective trauma, history, and memory in order to seek sociopolitical gains, both for the community at large and for themselves as individuals. Through their work, a Hazara identity is emerging on the basis of shared traumatic memory and the closely-linked sense that Hazaras historically were, and continue to be, targeted as an exceptional people for oppression in Afghanistan. Both because they say they are descended from an ancient, cosmopolitan people of the Silk Road, and because they state they have been influenced, since the 1980s and ‘90s, by Hazara leaders who activists say stress universalizing ideals of democratic inclusion and human rights, Hazara activists claim yet another kind of exceptionality: that they, the Hazaras, are by way of particular cultural attributes the best-prepared of all of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups to promote peace, respect for human rights, gender equality, and universal education. Such universalizing ideals are also promoted by foreign actors today — development organizations and NGOs. Activist claims that they have long been exposed to and even followed such ideals further their argument, among themselves and the Hazara community, that they are the people with the greatest ability to promote and live by such ideals when compared to other ethnic groups. All this should sound familiar to Central Asianist scholars and the Hazaras themselves. In this dissertation I go a step further still, to say that Hazaras’ narratives of shared persecution bear 1 a strong resemblance, in their emphasis on martyrdom and providential leadership, to foundational Shi’a (to which sect the majority of Hazaras belong) histories and legends, such as that of the treacherous murders of Hussein and his followers. Hazara activists weave together with these claims concerning current universals and ancient cosmopolitanisms narratives about the justice of Shi’ism as a religion and the injustices suffered by the early protagonists of this sect. All of these points are tied together by the themes of collective memory and its use by activists to instill a cultural trauma. What makes collective trauma a cultural trauma in this case is not just the dominance of narratives of oppression in discourses of what it means to be Hazara. Activists also often focus on the loss of Hazara culture under the pressure of outside hostility, creating feelings that the very existence of Hazara identity and culture are at stake. Hazara politicians promote some of these narratives when it is politically expedient. All the same, Hazaras activists seeking recognition for past persecution and current discrimination