crammed inside sealed metal containers under a hot August sun.
In at least one hospital, as many as 30 patients were shot as they
lay helplessly in their beds. The bodies of many of the victims
were left on the streets or in their houses as a stark warning to
the city’s remaining inhabitants. Horrified witnesses saw dogs
tearing at the corpses, but were instructed over loudspeakers and
by radio announcements not to remove or bury them.
(Colville, 1999)In one of the most poignant events of the massacre, a Pushtun
woman who had hidden eight Hazara women was shot along with
all of those she had tried to help. The massacre was supervised by
Mulla Abdul Manan Niazi, a fanatical Pushtun chauvinist from the
Shindand area who incited his troops to further action through
incendiary speeches over loudspeakers in which he denounced
Shiite Muslims as unbelievers. In a step reminiscent of Mengele at
Auschwitz, Niazi personally oversaw the selection of prisoners to
be moved in containers (Human Rights Watch, 1998). This frenzy
of killings was in all probability the worst single massacre in the
entire history of modern Afghanistan.
Yakaolang in the Hazarajat was also the scene of massacres of
Hazaras, this time under the supervision of the extremist Commander
Dadullah, a close adviser of Mulla Omar. The worst was in January
- Amnesty International estimated the number of victims at over
- Some 73 women, children, and elderly men were killed when
the Fatematuzahra mosque in the Kata Khana area of Yakaolang, in
which they had sought sanctuary, was attacked with two rockets
(Amnesty International, 2001: 3, 4). The Taliban also killed two dele-
gations of Hazara elders who had sought to intercede with them
(Human Rights Watch, 2001b). The Hazaras must have wondered
how their torment could ever end.
Protection of cultural property
The identities of communities and the meanings of the lives of
their members often owe much to cultural practices and cultural
240 The Afghanistan Wars