South Asia Terrorism Portal

AFGHANISTAN

Hazaras: Doubly Terrorised
Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

On September 10, 2022, two explosions hit Dasht-e-Barchi, a Hazara neighborhood in the west of Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. The first explosion reportedly occurred at 06:45am (AST) in front of a crowded commercial market and later another bomb exploded at the Pul-e-Khushk bus stop. Taliban's Ministry of Interior announced that the explosions occurred as a result of sticky bombs placed on bicycles. Three civilians were injured.

On June 26, 2022, the Taliban killed six Hazara people in a deliberate attack on the ethnic minority group in the Lal wa Sarjangal District of Afghanistan's Ghor province. An Amnesty International investigative report dated September 15, 2022, observed,

As reported on August 17, 2022, Taliban killed one of their former leaders, Maulvi Mehdi Mujahid, who was known as the first commander of the group hailing from the minority Shi'ite Hazara community. He was killed at an undisclosed location in Herat province, close to the border with Iran, where he was trying to flee.

On April 28, 2022, a bomb explosion killed nine people and wounded 13, in a minibus carrying Hazara passengers in Mazar-e Sharif.

On April 27, 2022, unidentified men killed five Hazara men on their way to the Dare-Suf coal mine in Samangan Province.

On April 19, 2022, a series of bomb blasts in Abdul Rahim Shaheed High School and near the Mumtaz Education Center, both of which are located within the predominately Hazara Shiite neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi in West Kabul, killed six and injured at least 11. Islamic State-Khorasan Province (IS-KP) took responsibility for the attack.

On January 21, 2022, a bomb blast on a minibus killed at least seven people in an area inhabited by the minority Hazara community in the western Afghan city of Herat.

As reported on August 30, 2021, 14 people belonging to the Hazara community were shot dead by the Taliban in the Khadir District of Daykundi Province. Among those killed were 12 soldiers, who had reportedly surrendered, and two civilians.

Earlier in between July 4 and 5, 2021, Taliban tortured and killed nine men of the Hazara community and ransacked their homes in Mundarakht village of Malistan District in Ghazni Province. The entire episode was part of a 'door-to-door' killing operation orchestrated by the Taliban.

According to United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Afghanistan 2021 Midyear Update on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict,

In the worst attack during this period, on May 8, 2021, explosions outside the Syed Al-Shahda school for girls in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood of Kabul, killed at least 68 people and wounded over 165. The majority of victims were girls attending school. The attack targeted Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras who live in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood.

The Hazara comprise 10 to 20 per cent of the national population of Afghanistan, where their traditional homeland is, in the central region  called Hazarajat. The Hazaras faced massacres, oppression, destruction of their cultural heritage, and the expurgation of their identity during the first Taliban rule in the 1990s. The various forms of attack, beyond their immediate damage, take a dreadful long-term toll on the survivors and families of victims, depriving them of breadwinners, often imposing severe medical burdens, and limiting their access to the necessities of daily life. For women, losing a male family member has predominantly terrible social and economic costs, particularly for young women who are suddenly widowed in a Taliban-ruled land.

The Hazaras suffer from a double persecution, first on the ground of ethnic difference with the majority Pashtun tribes, and second, because they follow the Shia sect of Islam in a Sunni majority country. The Hazara community is Afghanistan's third largest ethnic group. Their distinct features make them easy prey for Sunni hardliners, both of the Taliban and the IS-KP, who consider them ‘apostates’ and ‘infidels’. After the collapse of the first Taliban regime in 2001, the Hazaras continued to suffer targeted violence. Since 2015, the emergence of Da’esh (Islamic State) unleashed an even deadlier wave of attacks, with suicide bombers targeting schools, mosques and even hospitals in Hazara neighbourhoods.

On September 9, 2022, Richard Bennett, in his Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan stated,

Apart from the violence and brutal attacks, the Hazara community is also facing the problem of forcible eviction and land grabs. Taliban officials in several provinces across Afghanistan have forcibly displaced residents, partly to re-distribute land to their own supporters. In early October 2021, the Taliban and associated militias evicted hundreds of Hazara families from the southern Helmand province and the northern Balkh province. This followed earlier evictions from Daikundi, Uruzgan, and Kandahar provinces. Since the Taliban came to power in August, 2021, they have told many Hazaras and other residents in these five provinces to leave their homes and farms, in many cases with only a few days’ notice, and without any opportunity to present their legal claims to the land. The largest displacements have reportedly taken place in 15 villages in the Daikundi and Uruzgan provinces, where the Taliban evicted at least 2,800 Hazara residents in September, 2021.

In a political eye-wash in October 2021, the Taliban Interior Ministry spokesperson, Saeed Khosty, declared that the regime would guarantee security for religious minorities: “As a responsible government, we are responsible for protecting all citizens of Afghanistan, especially the country’s religious minorities.” The reality, however, is that the minorities in Afghanistan, prominently including the Hazaras, are being crushed both by the Taliban and by IS-KP, and are without any recourse or protection against the depredations of this twin terror. Despite their pretensions at international forums, there is increasing and cumulative evidence that the present Taliban is little different in its convictions, policies and actions, from its earlier and deeply regressive regime of 1996-2001.

INDIA

Bihar-Chhattisgarh-Jharkhand: Fall of a Maoist Bastion
Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

On September 21, 2022, Union Home Minister (UHM) Amit Shah congratulated the Government Forces for freeing Buddha Pahad in Jharkhand, after almost three decades of Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) dominance, and tweeted,

In another tweet, he said,

Buddha Pahad is a 55-square kilometer forested area at the tri-junction of Latehar and Garhwa Districts in Jharkhand and Balrampur in neighbouring Chhattisgarh; the extremely inaccessible forested areas of Chakrabandha is scattered across Gaya and Aurangabad Districts; and Bhimabandh is located in the Munger District of Bihar. The three had long been described as the ‘Terror Axis region’, which the Maoists had dominated for the last three decades due to its topography.

According to data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 32 Maoist-linked incidents have been recorded in the ‘Terror Axis region’ in the current year (data till September 25, 2022). In the corresponding period of 2021, there were 20 such incidents. Through 2021, the region accounted for 35 such incidents. 1,393 such incidents have been recorded in the region since March 6, 2000, when SATP started documenting data on LWE-related incidents in India.

Of 32 Maoist-linked incidents in 2022, two were incidents of killing, which resulted in four fatalities, all Maoists, (data till September 25, 2022). In the corresponding period of 2021, there were three incidents of killing, resulting in six fatalities (two civilians and four Maoists). There were another three incidents of killing, resulting in seven fatalities (five civilians, one SF trooper and one Maoist) in the remaining period of 2021. Since March 6, 2000, the ‘Terror Axis region’ recorded 779 fatalities (282 civilians, 211 SF personnel, 257 Maoists, and 29 fatalities in the Not Specified category) in 309 incidents of killing.

Between March 6, 2000 and September 25, 2022, Jharkhand recorded a total of 2,167 fatalities (807 civilians, 541 SF personnel, 764 Maoists, and 55 Not Specified) in 1,027 incidents of killing, Chhattisgarh recorded a total of 3,517 fatalities (944 civilians, 1,182 SF personnel, 1,367 Maoists, and 24 Not Specified) in 1,464 incidents of killing, and Bihar recorded 1,185 fatalities (496 civilians, 271 SF personnel, 330 Maoists, and 88 Not Specified) in 460 incidents of killing. The ‘Terror Axis region’ accounted for 11.34 per cent of the total fatalities in these three States, since March 6, 2000. 

Further, this region accounted for 12.55 per cent of total civilian fatalities recorded in these three States (282 out of 2,247 fatalities) since March 6, 2000. In 2022, however, the region has recorded no civilian fatality, thus far. The last fatality in this category in the ‘Terror Axis region’ was recorded on November 13, 2021, when four persons of a family, including two women, were hung to death by Maoist cadres, who also blew up their houses in Manubar village under the Dumaria Police Station limits of Gaya District of Bihar.

This region also accounted for 11.08 per cent of total SF fatalities recorded in these three States (221 out of 1,994 fatalities) since March 6, 2000. In 2022, however, the region has not recorded any fatality, thus far. The last fatality in this category in the ‘Terror Axis region’ was recorded on September 28, 2021, when a Deputy Commandant of Jharkhand Jaguars (JJ) was killed in an exchange of fire between the SFs and the LWEs during a combing operation in the Saliya Forest area in the Latehar District of Jharkhand. A cadre of the Jharkhand Jan Mukti Parishad (JJMP), a CPI-Maoist splinter group, was also killed in the encounter.

This region accounted for 10.44 per cent of total LWE fatalities recorded in these three States (257 out of 2,461 fatalities), since March 6, 2000. In the most recent incident, on March 26, 2022, three cadres of the Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC), a CPI-Maoist splinter group, were shot dead by SFs in a forest area under the Manika Police Station in Latehar District, Jharkhand. The three bodies were recovered during a search operation following the gunfight.

Significantly, the overall SF:Maoist kill ratio in the ‘Terror Axis region’, since March 6, 2000, remains in favour of the SFs at 1:1.21. When the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar in are taken into consideration in their entirety, the ratio also favours the SFs at 1:1.23.

According to the SATP database, SFs have already arrested 25 Maoists in 2022 (until September 25, 2022) in the ‘Terror Axis region’, in addition to 43 in 2021. 1,131 Maoists have been arrested in the region since March 6, 2000. Moreover, at least one Maoist surrendered in 2022, in addition to three in 2021. 76 Maoists have reportedly surrendered in the region since March 6, 2000. The total number of arrests in the three State is 9,386 since March 6, 2000, as against 4,662 surrendered.

This numeric data of incidents is probably a gross underestimate, as non-reportage of incidents due to fear or inaccessibility of the region is likely in several of cases.

Not surprisingly, all the six Districts within which the ‘Terror Axis region’ falls [Aurangabad, Gaya, and Munger of Bihar; Balrampur of Chhattisgarh; and Garhwa and Latehar of Jharkhand] are among the 70 Districts in 10 States across the country covered under the ‘Security Related Expenditure (SRE) scheme’ that funds focused operations against LWEs. Moreover, both Gaya in Bihar and Latehar in Jharkhand, are listed among the ‘25 Most (LWE) Affected Districts’ in eight States of the country, while, Aurangabad was classified as a ‘District of Concern’, by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) on June 19, 2021.

In a Press Information Bureau (PIB) press release on September 21, 2022, UHM Amit Shah, while stating that the UMHA had reached the final stage of a decisive battle against LWE across the country, asserted that the Ministry would continue the Zero Tolerance Policy against LWE and Terrorism, and the fight would be further intensified. He disclosed, further,

Significantly, according to a June 15, 2022, report, the CRPF launched an operation code-named Double Bull, from February 8 to February 25, in Bihar and Jharkhand, that saw 14 encounters over 18 days in Lohardaga and Latehar, which resulted in the recovery of 28 weapons, 2,000 rounds of ammunition, 196 detonators and 16 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), while one Maoist was killed and 14 were arrested, including Balram Oraon, ‘zonal commander’ of CPI-Maoist, who carried a reward of INR 1 million on his head. Other than Oraon the prominent Maoists arrested included, ‘sub zonal commander’ Dashrath Singh Kherwar, ‘area commander’ Markesh Nagesia, Shaileshwar Varao, Mukesh Korwa, Viren Korwa, Shailendra Nagesia, Sanjay Nagesia, Sheela Kherwar, and Lalita Devi, all carried rewards on their heads. In addition, on June 13, 2022, three Maoists — Baleshwar Koda, Nageshwar Koda and Arjun Koda —surrendered before the SFs in the Jamui District of Bihar. The Maoists were active along the Bhimabandh tri-junction of Bihar. While Baleshwar, facing 72 criminal cases in Jamui and Lakhisarai Districts, carried a reward of INR 50,000, Nageshwar had a bounty of INR 100,000 on his head, and Arjun, INR 25,000.

According to a September 7, 2022, report, since the launch of Operation Octopus on September 4, 2022, at least one Chinese cylinder-type grenade, 35 Chinese grenades and three Chinese cone grenades, along with a large cache of arms and ammunition, had been seized.

In a tweet on September 21, 2022, Kuldiep Singh, Director-General (DG), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), disclosing details of Operation Thunderstorm, stated,

DG CRPF, Singh, further stated that Bihar was free of LWE now and SFs had made inroads into areas in Jharkhand that were once inaccessible due to the presence of Maoists, after considerable success in 2022 in Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh through three special operations - 'Operation Octopus', 'Operation Thunderstorm' and 'Operation Bulbul' - launched in April this year. DG CRPF Singh observed,

Indeed, on September 19, 2022, for the first time after the elimination of Naxalites, MI helicopters landed at the SF camp that had been established on Budha Pahar. 20 Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) have been established in Jharkhand, of which 11 had come up only in the preceding six months. Jharkhand Police spokesman Amol Vishnukant Homkar stated supply of logistics and other goods to the soldiers by helicopter and other means could now be sustained and, with the help of SFs, roads, hospitals and other necessary infrastructure would be built for the common people in the area.

The decisive victory in the ongoing fight against LWEs depends on the substantial security and developmental consolidation against the residual Maoist operational capacities which remain in some affected regions across the country. Further operational pressure by the SFs, coupled with intensive focus on developmental and administrative outreach, can set free the remaining affected areas, just as the inaccessible areas of Buddha Pahad, Chakrabandha and Bhimabandh have been released from the clutches of the rebels.

AFGHANISTAN

US president Joe Biden officially ends Afghanistan's designation as major non-NATO ally: United States (US) President Joe Biden has officially terminated the designation of Afghanistan as a major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) ally, more than a year after the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) took over the country. In 2012, the United States named Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally, which cleared the way for the two countries to maintain a Defence and economic relationship. Ariana News, September 24, 2022.

Allegations of Taliban killing detainees in Panjshir appear 'credible', says UNAMA: The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) had said that allegations that the Taliban killed detainees in the Panjshir Province of northern Afghanistan appear "credible". On September 19, a UNAMA post on its official Facebook page indicated that the UN agency was following and monitoring the developments in Panjshir, the birthplace of the National Resistance Front (NRF), a group that opposes the Taliban. The Khaama Press, September 20, 2022.

Rohingya crisis may affect security of the entire region, warns Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina: On September 23, calling upon the United Nations (UN) to play an effective role in solving the Rohingya crisis, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has warned that the problem may affect the security and stability of the entire region, and beyond if it persists. She made the call while delivering her speech in the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The Daily Star, September 25, 2022.

Rohingyas won't be allowed any more to enter Bangladesh, says Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan: On September 19, the Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, in the context of rising violence in Rakhine state of Myanmar located along Bangladesh-Myanmar border, said that no more Rohingya will be allowed to enter the country. Those who entered the country earlier fleeing persecution in Myanmar have created many problems, he added. Prothomalo, September 20, 2022.