Ethnic Conflicts In The Kite Runner

Everyone is affected by their history and the culture they grew up in, this effect often seeps into how people interact. This is never more the case than with the people of Afghanistan, where deep social and ethnic divides lead to conflict every day and large-scale attacks every couple of weeks. These conflicts usually occur between the majority Pashtuns and the minority Hazaras. In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the effects of ethnic and cultural divisions on human interaction is examined through the ways Hassan and Amir, Assef and Hassan, the Taliban and the Hazaras, and Baba and Hassan, treat one another and interact which is important because it exposes the extent to which the minority people in Afghanistan were oppressed, specifically

This belief still persists today within many Afghans such as Gen. Taqat who said, “Pashtuns are the rulers and owners of Afghanistan; they are the real inhabitants of Afghanistan,” said Gen. Abdul Wahid Taqat, a former intelligence official. “Afghanistan means ‘where Pashtuns live.’ ”(NYT). The belief that Afghanistan is meant for the Pashtuns leads to constant bombings and attacks on other minority groups in Afghanistan and is what lead to the persecution of the Hazaras under Taliban rule. However, this idea did not just begin underneath Talib rule, it has persisted throughout history and is widespread. The Pashtun dominance of Afghanistan has existed since the late 19th century and the belief that Hazaras pollute Afghanistan is present in many people. In the “Kite Runner” Assef, as a child, shares his own ideas about this topic when he is talking to Amir and Hassan, he also believes, ‘Afghanistan is the land of the Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans… not this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland.”( Khaled Hosseini 40). The commonly held idea that Afghanistan is home to just the Pashtuns is an oppressive one as it leads to large-scale conflicts. These conflicts have become so regular that as one Hazara man put it, ‘“Suicide attacks are a part of our daily life that we see but can’t do anything

This is derived from the poverty forced onto Hazaras, and the control the Afghan government has had on the Hazaras. The Hazaras were not always oppressed as they, “lived a relatively independent existence in Afghanistan until the 1890s when they were brought under the control of Kabul in a series of wars during the reign of Abd al-Rahman (1880–1901).” But now they are, “Looked down upon by other Afghans, the Hazara are the poorest of the Afghan ethnolinguistic groups.”( Farr). What Farr explains here is that as a result of their being conquered the Hazaras are unable to escape poverty, so they are looked down upon in Afghan society, and because they are looked down upon they are unable to rebel against the tyranny the often face. The idea that Hazaras are of a lower class is a source of the persecution of the Hazara people. The belief that Hazaras are below Pashtuns also trickles into The Kite Runner and is one of the main reasons Amir treats Hassan poorly and tells himself that Hassan is a servant, not a friend. After Hassan is sexually assaulted by Assef, Amir reasons to himself about his inaction, thinking ”Was it a fair price? The answer floated to my conscious mind before I could thwart it: He was just a Hazara, wasn’t he” (77). Amir’s struggle with how to justify his actions ultimately results in him