Members of an internally displaced Afghan family sit on a truck as they flee Jaghori district to escape ongoing battles between Taliban and Afghan security forces in Ghazni on Nov. 15. (Zakeria Hashimi/AFP/Getty Images)
BAMIAN, Afghanistan — It was 3 a.m. when the loudspeaker at the village mosque crackled to life. An elder was calling everyone to come quickly. Taliban forces had just attacked a neighboring village, he said, and there was no time to lose.
Murtaza Nasiri, 23, recalled later that he was among those who immediately volunteered to help defend their village, Haider, located in the long-peaceful ethnic Shiite Hazara heartland of Ghazni province. Nasiri had grown up there, and he was studying to be an economist.
He had never held a gun in his life. But suddenly, he found himself being handed a Kalashnikov automatic rifle and following a group of men up the forested hills, where they began firing toward the insurgents. He had no idea how to handle the weapon, so someone else grabbed it.
“I had never experienced anything like this before,” Nasiri said, bursting into tears as he recounted the harrowing Nov. 6 attack.
Nasiri’s family and at least 1,000 others have fled to Bamian, a city 200 miles north, from a ferocious assault on their villages across Jaghori and Malistan, two Hazara-dominated districts in Ghazni, as well as a third in next-door Uruzgan. The violence, which continued for two weeks and left more than 100 dead, took residents and local police by surprise. Afghan forces ultimately quelled the assault and pushed the Taliban out of the villages, but sporadic fighting continues.
Until now, Shiite Hazara communities in Ghazni had remained untouched. But as the Taliban, a mainly Pashtun and Sunni militant group, has expanded its territory across the country — leaving just 55 percent of Afghan districts under government control or influence — it has launched daring attacks to seize control of Hazara and Shiite strongholds in central Afghanistan.
In its most significant attack on a major city in three years, the Taliban besieged the provincial capital, Ghazni city, in August. According to local leaders, insurgents had met with Jaghori elders in recent months, asking them to accept Taliban rule, but had been strongly rejected.
Vehicles travel on the highway between Ghazni and Kabul in October. (Zakeria Hashimi/AFP/Getty Images)
The unexpected attacks came as Taliban leaders expressed interest in reconciliation and attended peace discussions in Moscow and Qatar. Analysts said they expect the insurgents to keep up an aggressive battlefield campaign in order to drive a harder bargain.
Ethnic minority Hazaras have frequently been attacked and persecuted by the Islamic State, a violent Sunni militia that views them as apostates, and they were targeted on occasion by the Taliban regime in the late 1990s. In Kabul last week, a demonstration against the violence by ethnic Hazaras turned into tragedy when a suicide bomber on foot detonated near the crowd, leaving at least six people dead.
In Nasiri’s village and several others, local armed men held off the Taliban fighters for several days, while the government sent in hundreds of army troops, including special operations forces, to counter the wave of attacks.
But on Nov. 11, local witnesses and officials said, a single Taliban raid on Hotqol village left 23 Afghan Special Forces members dead, along with dozens of local fighters. Villagers interviewed in Bamian described seeing bodies piled onto a truck. Many said they decided to flee soon after.
One of those who made the hazardous drive north, over rugged roads and mountain passes in freezing cold and rain, was Shafiqa Rezai, 29. A midwife in Angori village, she was on night duty Nov. 6 when the gunfire began. By early morning, she said, three corpses and 18 wounded people had arrived.
After hiding at home for a week, while the fighting came closer, Rezai, 29, said she and her family decided to escape. They drove for three days and nights in a convoy of six cars before reaching Bamian, a Hazara stronghold.
“I cried all the way,” she said. “We left everything behind.”
Ethnic Hazaras from the Malistan and Jaghuri districts of Ghazni province take shelter at a mosque after fleeing their homes and arriving in Ghazni city on Nov. 12. (Sayed Mustafa/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
They were greeted by local volunteers, registered as displaced people, and directed to residents who helped many of them with food, shelter and coal stoves. Local agencies also offered medical checkups and blankets.
In interviews here last week, displaced people from Jaghori and Malistan described their home districts as havens of calm and development for Hazaras during the past 17 years, with almost no interference from insurgents. They said there was little crime and schools for both boys and girls.
That tranquil atmosphere was abruptly shattered with the recent attacks. Schools and markets closed, cellphone towers were destroyed, and some village militia fighters are still missing.
One militiaman who fled to Bamian, Habibullah Ahmadi, 48, said he had lost faith that the government would protect them. Several others said that Taliban representatives had told villagers they wouldn’t be harmed if they stay indoors, but that nobody trusted them.
Some of the displaced said they were thinking of resettling in Bamian, where they have been welcomed in homes and mosques. After the Taliban captured Hotqol, the managers of an orphanage in the nearby Jaghori district center managed to transport all 120 children to a branch of the same organization in Bamian, where they may remain.
“We were really worried the insurgents might harm or even take the children” if the district fell, said Ghulam Hussain Matin, director of the Shuhada nonprofit, which runs both orphanages, as a group of children played volleyball in the yard outside. “The sounds of explosions and bullets can also do them psychological harm.”
Internally displaced Afghan civilians rest after fleeing from Jaghori district to escape ongoing battles between Taliban and Afghan security forces in Ghazni on Nov. 15. (Zakeria Hashimi/AFP/Getty Images)
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