may pre-dispose them to this kind of behavior; and iv the participants in the discrimination are often not known to each other, so there is no real social
relationship to mitigate the discrimination 41. Milner also explains that children inhabit social realities such as the home,
the street, the school and the recreation ground with correspondingly few identities 65. Starting from the existence of those social realities, Milner
continues that children absorb an idea of their standing in terms of qualities, that is, a rudimentary sense of identity.
Related to the culture of the Pashtuns in Afghanistan Paul Hockings Ed says that a Pashtun man tends to be indulgent toward their children culturally
Encyclopedia of World Cultures 232.
2.1.8 Historical Background of Afghanistan
2.1.8.1 The People According to Jamalludin Ahmad 37 in his book entitled Afghanistan: A
Brief Survey, the people of Afghanistan are mainly of the original Indo-European stock that has absorbed various other racial elements. They are a fine, healthy,
manly race of hardy, clean-living, abstemious mountaineers. The unending struggle with the forces of nature, the position, climate and nature of the country,
the pastrol life and the historical influences have all tended to develop remarkable qualities of resistance endurance and self-confidence.
People of Afghanistan are true to their own customs and ideals, and extremely proud of their birth and independence. With this they combine the habit
of ready obedience to those, whom they elect to place in authority over themselves, coupled with an intolerance of domineering. They may be led but
never driven Jamalludin Ahmad 38. According to Tate in The Kingdom of Afghanistan: A Historical Sketch,
Afghanistan population can be divided into three main big tribes namely the Pashtun the real Afghan, the Hazara, and the Tajik 14. This thesis concerns
only to the two first tribes of Afghanistan. The followings are their explanation. 2.1.8.1.1The Pashtuns The real Afghans
The Pashtuns, also called Pathans, are an Eastern Iranian ethno-linguistic group with population primarily in Afghanistan and in the North-West Frontier
Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan. The Pashtun are typically characterized by their usage of the Pashto
language and practice of Pashtunwali, which is an ancient traditional code of conduct and honor Miller 1-2. The Afghans pride themselves on their nomadic
proclivities, and on those qualities, which they complacently regard as military virtues, but which others may stigmatize, with good reason, as brutality Tate 15.
It seems that not all tribes in Afghanistan who are cultivators of the lands they occupy can use Pashto language. Tate 15 further makes clear of this fact by
stating that the name Afghans the Pashtuns are applied to the tribes collectively, and also to the pastoral tribe among them only. For over 250 years, Pashtun
people have reigned as the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan. Peshawar, Quetta, Kabul and Kunduz are ethnically mixed cities with large Pashtun
Populations. In Afghanistan itself, the Pashtuns make up an estimated 42 of the
population or 13.3 million people Miller 3. Tytler suggests that chief among the peoples of Afghanistan are the Pathans or true Afghans, rulers of the country, and
principal element in its diverse population 48. It means that the massive Pashtuns vote for themselves to be declared a leader of the people of Afghanistan.
Even the kings of Afghanistan have not ever been chosen from other tribes beside Pashtun Miller 1.
Tate explains that individuality has a greater field for its expression among Afghans than among other races 16. The Pashtun’s character seems to be
thoroughly tough. It is a pride for them to take a success by their own hand. As can be observed from the story of The Kite Runner, Baba, as a Pashtun, is
recognized and honored by many people in Kabul because he has made his own success Hosseini 15.
The overwhelming majority of Pashtuns follow Sunni Islam, mainly the Hanafi School One of the former schools in Afghanistan. A sizable minority
population of Shi’a Muslim Pashtuns exists in eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.
2.1.8.1.2 The Hazaras The Hazaras are a Persian-speaking people who reside mainly in the
Hazarajat region. They seem to have partial Mongolian origins with some admixture from surrounding indigenous groups. They speak a dialect of Persian
which is known as Hazaragi. It is commonly believed by many Afghans that the Hazara are descendants of Genghis Khan’s army, which marched into the area
during the 12
th
century. Many Mongol solders and their family members settled in
the area and remaned there after the Mongol empire dissolved in the 13
th
century, converting to Islam and adopting local customs Miller 24.
According to History of Afghanistan: From The Earliest Period to The Outbreak of The War of 1878 written by Colonel G. B. Malleson, it is said that
The Hazaras are Tartars by decent, simple-hearted, and differ much from the the Pashtuns 44. Tytler in his book entitled Afghanistan: A Study of Political
Developments in Central and Southern Asia reasserts that the Hazaras are honest, courageous, good natured, and simple. He adds that the Hazaras make excellent
servants, first rate soldiers and cheerful laborers 57. Furthermore, Malleson explains that the Hazaras are from whom the Afghan artillery is principally
recruited 45. So, as the assumption of the Hazaras is taken, they are hardy, strongly built and industrious, and the ranks of servants and laborers throughout
the country are recruited from them Tate 15. Based on an official census numbers from the 1960’s to the 1980’s, as well
as information found in mainly scholarly sources, the Encyclopedia Iranica gives a list showing that the Hazaras gained 8,0 of the entire numbers of the Afghans.
They are even smaller than the Tajik who own 33,7 of the Afghans. The next census of Afghan tribes was conducted by CIA in 2006 and reported on the CIA
World Factbook. It says that the Hazara’s total percentage was around 9 . The increasing number of the Hazara’s population is just around 1 if we observe it
from 60’s. The most recent fact of tribes population as reported by Miller was observed in 2009 by American broadcasting channel ABC news, the British BBC,
and the German ARD. It was released on February 9
th
2009 and gives information
that the Hazaras could only increase their population number to 10 after the last number in 2006 which was 9 Miller Ed. 29-30. According to Frederic P.
Miller, a sizable Hazara communities can only be found in Pakistan, Quetta and as well as Iran 24.
Unlike most Afghans the Hazaras are Shias, who have often set them apart from their neighbors. The physical traits of the Hazaras have also rendered them
easily distinguishable. They do not coalesce socially or politically with either the Tajiks or the Pashtuns. They are located to the west of the road from Kandahar to
Kabul. 2.1.8.1.3 Sunni and Shia in Afghanistan
A book entitled Afghanistan of the Afghans explains that the State religion in Afghanistan is Islam. The Majority of the inhabitants belong to the Sunni sect,
while the Afghans of Persian origin, the Hazaras, and the Afghan Turis of the Kurram border are Shiahs Shah 210. In Modern Afghanistan, Shah adds that the
State religion is Islam of the Hanafi School, but freedom of worship exists for all religions and sects 263. A paragraph of sufficient information about some
religion regulation in Afghanistan is quoted as follow: “The accepted principles of the Hanafee or the Sunni sect being current, a
sense of conservatism in matters religious was indicated by the Afghans during their recent history. Indeed, it is said that some had bordered upon
fanaticism. In support of this the following points were made: that it was ordered that the Hindus should wear a distinctive headgear, that the Shiahs
were not to make public demonstration on the days of Moharrum in commemoration of the Battle of Martyrs, that the plinth of their mosques
should be five feet lower than the mosques of the established Church, that the Hindu girls and women were to use red or mustard yellow burga,, or
the veil, that the non admittance of the Christian missionaries in the Afghan territory was prohibited, and that Qadyani missionaries, both
during Ameer Habibullah Khan’s and the present ruler’s reign, were
killed, for preaching the gospel of the Ahmedi sect. The whole really meant that there was no religious toleration in Afghanistan.” Shah-b
Modern Afghanistan 211-212 Malleson explains that the women of Moghol Mongol origin including
the Hazara go unveiled 44, which is one of the causes makes Sunni and Shia go different way. There is information which can be retrieved from the web showing
that firstly Sunni and Shia differ in the point of religious belief. Shia Muslims believe that the Imam is sinless by nature, and that his authority is infallible as it
comes directly from God. Therefore, Shia Muslims often venerate the Imams as saints and perform pilgrimages to their tombs and shrines in the hopes of divine
intercession. Sunni Muslims counter that there is no basis in Islam for a hereditary privileged class of spiritual leaders, and certainly no basis for the veneration or
intercession of saints. Sunni Muslims contend that leadership of the community is not a birthright, but a trust that is earned and which may be given or taken away
by the people themselves What’s the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims, web by Huda.
According to Huda, former the leaders of Sunni Muslim that finally had
been chosen by the Sunni alone made some traditions hadith and spiritual life of the Prophet’s life by their own perspective. Shia people, until now, reject those
things because they believe that religious practices do not base on the testimony of these new leaders. And that is why, as of the separation, the Shia and the Sunni
have been living their Islam in their own way. This difference in perspective in living spiritual of Islam went bigger and it is said as the cause that led most
Muslim through all over the world to the Battle of Siffin Shi’a-Sunni relations, web.
To understand the separation among Sunni and Shia better, Pierre Tristam gives us an additional explanation. He thinks that, at heart, Sunnis and Shiites are
like Catholics and Protestants in the commonality of some fundamental beliefs. But their differences, especially in nations where the Sunni-Shiite split is
exacerbated by each others proximity as in Iraq and Lebanon, run so deep that intolerance and violence shadow the two groups, making coexistence difficult
The Difference between Sunnis and Shiites, web. Tristam’s statement is reasserted by Jeff Stein, the author of an article in the New York Times on
October 17, 2006 who says that in a remotely similar discord between Catholic and Protestants but far more lethal vein, the 1,400-year Sunni-Shiite rivalry is
playing out in the streets of Baghdad, raising the specter of a breakup of Iraq into antagonistic states, one backed by Shiite Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia and
other Sunni states Can you tell a Sunni from Shiite?, web. Afghanistan has 84 of Sunni followers comparing the 15 of the
Shiite. As how Catholic and Protestants cannot get along until now, Sunni the Pastuns and Shia the Hazaras experience the same situation because of doctrinal
and historical differences The Difference between Sunnis and Shiites, web.
2.1.8.1.4 Situation between the Pahstuns and the Hazaras in Afghanistan In the story of the Kite Runner, it is said that the Pashtuns has presecuted
and oppressed the Hazaras Hosseini 8-9. It is obvious that the relationship
between the two tribes is not pretty good and safe. Assef, one of the notorious characters in the story gives us small information of the situation between them.
He says that Afghanistan is the land of Pashtun. It always has been, always will be. He asserts that he is the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, and not Hassan, a
“Flat Nose”. Assef thinks that Hassan people pollute his watan homeland. The Hazaras has dirtied the Pashtuns’ blood. In the end he states that Afghanistan is
only for Pashtun. And that is his big vision Hosseini 36. The Hazaras are just casted away and forced to stay in a restricted area like
Hazarajat Hosseini 37-38. Tytler 57 explains clearer in his book about what has happened between the Pashtuns the true Afghans and the Hazaras during the
history. He explains that the Hazaras differ radically from the Afghans, with whom they have been constantly at feud, and retain many of the traits of their
Central Asian ancestors. The Pashtuns have tortured the Hazaras until the fact now, like what the
web says, Sunni Muslim gain 80 of their population which far more enormous than Shi’a Muslim population 19 Afghanistan, web.
2.2 Theoretical Framework
