Place · Hazara community quarter · Pakistan
Hazara Town, Quetta
Quetta holds the largest Hazara population outside Afghanistan, in two enclaves — Hazara Town on the west of the city and Marriabad on the east. The Hazaras are Persian-speaking Shias from the Hazarajat, the central Afghan highlands around Bamiyan, and the first large migration here followed Amir Abdur Rahman Khan's campaigns against them between 1891 and 1893, which involved mass killing and enslavement. Further waves came in the 1980s, the 1990s under the Taliban, and after 2001.
- Function
- Other / mixed
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested
- Location
- 30.174, 66.961
Worth knowing
Hazaras served in the British Indian Army as the Hazara Pioneers, and Pakistan's army was commanded by a Hazara, General Muhammad Musa Khan, while the community in Quetta has lived behind checkpoints since sectarian attacks began in the 1990s.
Casualty figures for the 1891–93 campaigns and for the later sectarian attacks are contested; the displacement itself is not.
Connections (3)
- Mythic displacement toBāmiyān
Quetta's Hazaras came from the Hazarajat, the central Afghan highlands whose best-known place is Bāmiyān, and they came because of a war. Amīr Abdur Rahmān Khān's campaigns against the Hazaras between 1891 and 1893 involved mass killing, enslavement and the seizure of grazing land, and the survivors' flight south-east into British Balochistan established the Quetta community. Later waves followed in the 1980s and under the Taliban. The Buddhas at Bāmiyān and the Hazara quarters in Quetta are two chapters of the same valley's history.
- In the same set asQuetta
Quetta is the most ethnically layered city in Pakistan and Hazara Town is the clearest instance of why: a Pashtun and Baloch town on the Afghan road, with a Persian-speaking Shia community that arrived from the Hazarajat in the 1890s and kept arriving for the next century, plus Punjabi and Urdu-speaking settlers from the cantonment period. The city's two Hazara quarters, on the west and east sides, have been walled and checkpointed since sectarian killings began in the 1990s.
- Site withinQuetta
Hazara Town sits within Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan — the main residential quarter of the Hazara Shia community in the city. The quarter houses most of Quetta's 500,000-strong Hazara population, who had migrated from Bamiyan and central Afghanistan over the 19-20 centuries. The 2013 Hazara Town bombings (10 January 2013 killing 96, 16 February 2013 killing 73-plus) made Hazara Town the site of some of the deadliest sectarian attacks in Pakistani Shia community history.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Hazaras” and “Persecution of Hazara people”. Sayed Askar Mousavi, The Hazaras of Afghanistan (1998); Human Rights Watch reporting on Quetta.
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