Marin Hock
La doctrine militaire « Shock and awe », « choc et effroi », appliquée à la presse : on ne commence pas petit, comme au Vietnam, on écrase d’emblée l’adversaire sous la puissance de feu, modèle Irak 2003. « Politico aurait pu commencer son édition européenne à 12 et voir venir. Mais leur stratégie, c’est la force massive : on démarre à 50, pas à 12 », explique Pierre Briançon, le futur correspondant du site d’information politique à Paris, et ancien de Libération (1980-1998), de Reuters et de DowJones. « 35 personnes à Bruxelles et des bureaux à Londres, Paris, Berlin, Francfort, Varsovie et à terme Rome et Madrid », détaille le patron de Politico.eu, Matthew Kaminski, ex du Wall Street Journal. Dès aujourd’hui, alors que l’équipe est encore en cours de recrutement, le site d’information, disponible uniquement en anglais, sera lancéeet, jeudi, le premier numéro du journal hebdomadaire gratuit distribué à Bruxelles, Paris ou encore Berlin. « Un lancement extrêmement rapide pour un projet aussi ambitieux, ça va être chaotique, mais excitant », se réjouit Briançon : « c’est comme Libé qui redémarre tous les deux ans », ironise-t-il.
Arrogance tranquilleCe débarquement américain sans précédent dans la capitale de l’Union fait frétiller d’aise les institutions communautaires qui y voient là une forme de reconnaissance : enfin, un média américain investit Bruxelles : « nous sommes fascinés par le pouvoir. Or, ici il y a du pouvoir et l’Union devient de plus en plus importante non seulement pour nous, les Américains, mais aussi pour l’Asie », affirme Matthew Kaminski, 45 ans, dans un excellent français (cet Américain d’origine polonaise a déjà été en poste à Bruxelles et est marié à une Française). « Ici, il y a un exécutif, un Parlement qui, sans son mode de fonctionnement, rappelle le Congrès américain, des agences de gouvernements, des lobbies, etc. ». Mais, tout en complimentant l’Europe sur sa puissance, il ne peut s’empêcher de la remettre à sa place : « les États-Unis font de l’innovation, Bruxelles écrit les règles du jeu ».
Une tranquille arrogance américaine – de Airbus au CERN en passant par les satellites ou l’industrie du numérique même si les plates-formes sont effectivement américaines, on pourrait lui démontrer le contraire —, qui n’a cependant rien à voir avec l’euroscepticisme britannique. Car Kaminski veut justement éviter que Politico.eu se comporte comme un média anglo-saxon de plus : « L’Europe est un objet journalistique pour nous, ni plus, ni moins », assure-t-il au moment où John Harris, l’un des fondateurs du site américain de passage à Bruxelles, passe la tête dans son bureau. « Les Américains sont pragmatiques, pas idéologiques », confirme Briançon : « l’Europe a émergé comme sujet d’information depuis le début du XXIe siècle. Les gens croyaient la connaître et ils ont découvert que ça n’était pas le cas ». Il faut donc les informer, mais sans a priori idéologique : « Lionel Barber, le patron du Financial Times, reconnaît lui-même qu’on ne peut plus couvrir le continent avec l’esprit de la City », assure Briançon.
La rédaction est donc logiquement très américaine et assez peu britannique et de nombreux Européens (parfaitement anglophones) ont été engagés. Mais aucune star du journalisme européen n’a accepté de ce joindre à cette aventure, contrairement à ce qui s’est passé aux États-Unis. Ainsi, l’Américain Peter Spiegel, patron du bureau du Financial Times à Bruxelles, a décliné l’offre qui lui a été faite de diriger Politico.eu. Pour palier ce manque de signatures, Politico en a fait venir des États-Unis, comme Matthew Kaminski, éditorialiste du WSJ, mais aussi sa correspondante à la Maison-Blanche, Carrie Budoff-Brown, à qui Barack Obama a adressé publiquement un mot plein d’humour lorsqu’il a appris son départ : « c’est vrai que la Belgique manque d’une version de Politico », a-t-il lancé hilare, sous-entendu pour comprendre ce pays… « Mais bon, vous allez voir, ils ont des gaufres délicieuses là-bas ». Politico n’a pas hésité à tweeter qu’il mettait en place « la plus grande rédaction impartiale » de Bruxelles, faisant grincer de nombreuses dents dans la salle de presse de la Commission. Il est vrai que le site ne pense pas que du bien des journalistes européens : « ce n’est pas qu’il n’y a pas ici de très bons journalistes, mais ce n’est pas la majorité », balance le journaliste Craig Winneker…
Politico estime que la couverture médiatique de l’Union est trop souvent technique et partant ennuyeuse. « Nous voulons humaniser cette ville. Il y a ici des gens intelligents, idiots, ambitieux, ridicules, il y a des drames humains qui se jouent. Bruxelles n’est pas un univers bureaucratique, mais politique, l’Europe est un cadre dramatique alors que les États-Unis ont un système politique stable depuis 240 ans. C’est ça qu’il faut raconter, même si ça ne sera pas facile, car c’est un cadre très fermé », explique Kaminski. Politico ne veut pas doublonner les agences de presse, mais raconter ce qui se passe derrière les portes closes et mettre en contexte. Bien sûr, l’Union ne se fait pas qu’à Bruxelles, qui reste « un nexus », comme le dit Kaminski, mais aussi dans les capitales de l’Union d’où l’ouverture de nombreux bureaux de correspondants pour raconter l’exercice du pouvoir au jour le jour. « Bruxelles, c’est une usine à scoops », renchérit le patron du site spécialisé dans les politiques publiques Contexte, Jean-Christophe Boulanger. « Nous voulons rendre Bruxelles si excitante qu’Hollywood aura envie d’y tourner des films », un « House of cards » européen, a résumé en décembre dernier Christoph Keese, le vice-président d’Axel Springer qui cofinance à hauteur de 50% Politico.eu : « ce sont les Allemands qui sont à l’origine du projet », reconnaît d’ailleurs Kaminski.
« Springer, l’éditeur du quotidien populaire Bild Zeitung, veut participer à la création d’un nouveau modèle économique pour la presse, car ils croient en l’avenir du journalisme, tout comme nous », poursuit-il : « Politico, ça n’est pas un modèle de nouveau journalisme, mais de nouveau business ». On ne connaît pas le budget, mais il est au moins de 10 millions de dollars et le financement est assuré pour plusieurs années afin de donner le temps à Politico.eu de s’installer dans le paysage médiatique. Pour autant « sa création n’est pas basée sur une étude de marché, mais sur une intuition », affirme Pierre Briançon.
Intuition et ambition
L’intuition et l’ambition sont la marque de fabrique de Politico. « Je pense que nous montrerons que nous sommes meilleurs que le New York Times ou le Washington Post », déclarait l’actuel PDG, Jim VandeHei, fin 2006, quelques mois avant le lancement du site américain. À l’époque, les propos de ce jeune reporter trentenaire avaient suscité sarcasmes et moqueries dans la capitale américaine. Sept ans plus tard, Politico a pourtant réussi un pari majeur : s’imposer comme une référence du journalisme politique, prisée par le Tout-Washington. Une réussite que les fondateurs de Politico comptent bien répéter à Bruxelles.
Outre-Atlantique, les lecteurs de Politico sont « les dizaines de milliers de gens qui travaillent dans les sphères du pouvoir à Washington, y compris les lobbyistes, entreprises, fédérations professionnelles, tous les groupes qui ont des intérêts à défendre au Congrès et à la Maison-Blanche, explique Ivan Couronne, correspondant de l’AFP au Congrès américain. Chaque mois, Politico.com attire entre 7 et 8 millions de visiteurs uniques, selon la firme spécialisée comScore. Loin, certes, des 48 millions du Washington Post et 59 millions du New York Times. Sauf que Politico présente deux différences majeures avec ses illustres concurrents : c’est un « pure player », autrement dit un site qui, lors de sa création, n’était adossé à aucune édition papier. Et il se consacre à un seul sujet : la politique.
« Nous avons prouvé que la domination du New York Times, du Washington Post ou du Wall Street Journal pouvait être remise en question par des nouveaux venus, se félicite John Harris, le rédacteur en chef de Politico qui est chargé de guider le nouveau-né européen. « En sept ans, le Washington Post a été remplacé par Politico », n’hésite pas à affirmer Matthew Kaminski.Financé par le millionnaire Robert Allbritton, héritier d’un empire médiatique, dirigé depuis ses débuts par Jim VandeHei et John Harris – tous deux venus du Washington Post –, Politico a toujours eu le même objectif : combiner la rapidité du web avec la légitimité des journaux traditionnels. À ses débuts en 2007, à un moment où la presse licencie plus qu’elle n’embauche, Politico recrute une trentaine de journalistes. La moitié sont des jeunes reporters en quête d’expérience, l’autre des plumes reconnues au carnet d’adresses fourni, à l’image de Mike Allen, correspondant à la Maison-Blanche pour le magazine Time. Leur mission : alimenter le site internet et un journal distribué gratuitement à Washington trois fois par semaine.
Conçu comme une startup, Politico mise immédiatement sur les réseaux sociaux. Et pour gagner en visibilité, l’entreprise signe des partenariats avec plusieurs chaînes de télévision, dont CBS. La « marque » Politico est lancée, le succès immédiat. À tel point que le média s’affirme comme un acteur majeur de la campagne présidentielle de 2008. « Nous étions un petit nouveau et pourtant, personne n’aurait pu couvrir cette campagne sans nous lire, estime John Harris. Nous étions le média de référence. Nous avons coorganisé deux débats présidentiels », dont un entre Hillary Clinton et Barack Obama.
D’autres versions linguistiques?« Ils étaient différents, ils étaient bons et ils étaient rapides, résume Trudy Lieberman, journaliste au Columbia Journalism Review, magazine spécialisé dans les médias. Leur succès a forcé leurs concurrents à s’adapter ». « Politico a commencé comme un bateau pirate comme Libé en 1981 », compare Matthew Kaminski. Rapidement, les médias traditionnels réagissent à la montée en puissance de Politico. Ils développent leurs équipes Internet, recrutent des bloggeurs, écrivent plus vite et mettent à jour plus souvent. Ils s’activent aussi sur Twitter. « Progressivement, Politico s’est fait rattraper, analyse Edward Wasserman, directeur de l’école de journalisme de l’Université de Berkeley (Californie). Leur traitement de l’information, qui semblait si unique à l’époque, ne l’est plus tant que ça aujourd’hui ». Politico vient d’ailleurs de connaître une année compliquée, marquée par de nombreux départs. L’une de ses journalistes-vedettes, Maggie Haberman, a ainsi été débauchée par le New York Times. Un coup dur pour la campagne présidentielle de 2016, car Haberman est très bien introduite au sein du camp Clinton. « C’est toujours décevant de voir quelqu’un partir, reconnaît John Harris. Mais je trouve ça gratifiant que nos concurrents recrutent des gens en raison du succès qu’ils ont eu à Politico. Je prends ça comme un compliment ».
Politico compte aujourd’hui plus de 175 journalistes, sur un effectif total de 360 personnes. En 2011, l’entreprise a lancé Politico Pro, une version payante destinée aux professionnels. Pour 8000 dollars en moyenne, les abonnés ont accès à des informations très pointues dans des secteurs aussi variés que l’agriculture, la cyber-sécurité, la défense, la santé ou l’énergie. Une quinzaine de « lettres » professionnelles en tout. Ce service assure la majeure partie des revenus de Politico, qui affirme être rentable, même si ses résultats financiers ne sont pas publics. Le reste du chiffre d’affaires provient essentiellement des publicités de sa version imprimée, diffusée à 35 000 exemplaires dans la région de Washington.
Des recettes que Politico va appliquer à Bruxelles : dans un premier temps, il publiera trois « lettres d’information » payantes (énergie, technologie, santé) et organiser des conférences pour faire rentrer de l’argent. Pour s’assurer une base de données conséquente, il a racheté « European Voice », un hebdomadaire créé en 1995 par The Economist et tombé, en 2012, entre les mains de Shéhérazade Semsar-de Boisséson, fondatrice de Development Institute International. Cela lui assure un fichier de 20.000 abonnés comprenant l’anglais et intéressés par l’information européenne, mais le journal disparait. « On ne vise pas seulement la bulle bruxelloise, mais tous les initiés qui s’intéressent à l’Europe », précise Craig Winneker. « Notre concurrent direct, ce sera le Financial Times », estime Pierre Briançon.
Kaminski n’exclue que d’autres versions linguistiques de Politico.eu voient le jour à terme : « l’anglais est la lingua franca de Bruxelles, mais si ça marche, on ira sur d’autres marchés linguistiques, comme le marché français ». Une perspective qui n’inquiète pas Contexte : « nous avons la même cible, les professionnels des politiques publiques et les passionnés, mais l’arrivée d’un concurrent est toujours une bonne chose, notamment parce que cela valide notre modèle original », se réjouit Jean-Christophe Boulanger. Mais les journaux classiques auront sans doute du souci à se faire…
N.B.: version longue de l’article que j’ai coécrit avec Frédéric Autran, notre correspondant à New York, et qui est paru le 20 avril.
Száz éve kezdődött az örmény népirtás.
A történészek becslései szerint az Oszmán birodalom 1,5 millió örményt mészárolhatott le 1915-1917 között. Noha az örménységet számos támadás érte korábban is, az áldozatok száma is jelentős volt, egyértelmű politikai döntés 1915. április 24-én született, Mehmet Talat Bey utasítására megkezdték az örmény közösség deportálását, kivégzését.
Törökország tagadja a népirtás tényét, szerintük a számok elnagyoltak, az áldozatok pedig polgárháborúban vesztették életüket.
A nyugati világ több állama, köztük legutóbb Németország is népirtásként kezeli az eseményeket, Magyarország azonban nem.
Eight abductions of groups of people have been reported since late February by officials, activists or media as having targeted ethnic Hazaras. The first was also the biggest: the abduction of 31 bus passengers in Zabul on 23 February 2015. Other crimes ‘against Hazaras’ have been reported from Ghazni, Farah, Daikundi and Balkh. AAN’s Qayoom Suroush has been examining the incidents in detail to see if there is a new trend of targeting this ethnic group. He finds much of the reporting has been full of mistakes with assumptions relayed as fact. With the possible exception of the Zabul mass abduction, he finds little to back up a notion of a new trend of ethnic targeting, but does say the reporting points to how vulnerable many Hazaras feel.
On 23 February 2015, a group of gunmen stopped two buses driving from Herat province to Kabul as they passed through Shahjoy district of Zabul province and kidnapped several dozen of the passengers. One female passenger described later how the gunmen first collected all cell phones and national ID cards from the passengers, then separated males from females, then Hazaras from non-Hazaras, and finally took away 31 Hazara men, leaving the other passengers on the road. Another eyewitness, who also said that all the hostages were Hazaras, said the kidnappers had worn black masks and military uniforms and spoke Pashtu and Dari.
Two months later, the majority of abductees, possibly all, are still being held. Some reports (see for example here) have talked about an old man having died because of the “cold weather” and one ANA soldier who was among the abductees having been found beheaded. (1) The public and the national and international media, almost in unison, have spoken of an incident deliberately aimed at Hazaras, even though the identities, motivation and goals of the kidnappers in fact remain unclear. But if the list of hostages is scrutinised, the assumption that all are Hazaras is not certain and the man who was beheaded – if this report is accurate – was not Hazara, but Tajik. Among the families of the hostages camped out in Zarnigar Park, protesting what they perceive as the government’s inadequate response, there is also a Tajik family who believes their son is among the Zabul hostages.
Allegations to be found in the many, often contradictory sources of information as to the aim of the kidnappers vary from the kidnappers wanting to target Shias to them being Taliban and wanting to swap the hostages for prisoners. The Taleban have denied carrying out the abduction, though, and no other armed group has claimed the kidnapping. Some members of parliament from Zabul still told Tolo News that the passengers had been kidnapped with the help of Mansur Dadullah, a senior Taleban commander and brother of the notorious Mullah Dadullah who was killed in 2007. Mansur was reported to have joined the Islamic state group, operating from Zabul, but if he had, he is back with the Taleban, according to an interview he gave to Radio Tehran on 5 April 2015 in which he also denied having been involved in the kidnapping of the 31 passengers. He said that “foreign fighters who fled from Pakistan kidnapped the passengers” and wanted to exchange them for “family members” imprisoned by the government (interview in Pashto here). He did not mention the ethnic background of the passengers as being of importance.
This fits with what the chairman of the Zabul Provincial Council, Attaullah Haqparast, told Tolo News on 10 April 2015. He claimed the kidnappers had asked for a prisoner swap. He, too, said the kidnappers were “foreigners” and added, “We have sent our elders several times to the kidnappers, and their translator talked to us. They have demanded the release of twelve prisoners.” (Afghanistan’s National Security Council reportedly rejected the deal.)
Efforts to free the hostages seem to be stuck at the moment. Rescue operations by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have, so far, failed. After one mission launched at the beginning of March, Vice President Sarwar Danesh said the ANSF had killed more than 100 insurgents (including some foreigners) and arrested “the leader of the group responsible for the abduction,” whom he named as Mullah Abdullah Kakar. He gave no further information about the man’s political background or possible aims. However, none of the abductees were, in fact, released. Some Hazara elders and activists now claim that no such operation took place and that the government lied about both operation and arrest.
In the end, the evidence that Hazaras were specifically targeted comes from two passengers who were let go and who said the kidnappers had separated Hazaras from the non-Hazaras. This may have been due to ‘ethnic targeting’ – or they could have chosen the Hazaras because, for example, they have the weakest political and tribal lobby and any backlash against the kidnappers would be smaller. When, hopefully, the hostages are freed, things may become clearer.
The second incident: Qarabagh (Ghazni)
On 15 March 2015, another ‘Hazara kidnapping’ was reported, this time in Qarabagh district of Ghazni province (where about half of all citizens are Hazaras). Taleban stopped a car coming from Jaghori district (another Hazara-dominated district) and took ten passengers, all of whom were Hazaras. However, they released them only hours later, after the Taleban had interrogated the travellers and warned the women to wear “proper Islamic attire”, meaning burqas rather than the large headscarves or chadors favoured by many Hazara women. This kind of road block is common across the country, including in insecure Qarabagh district where there is little Afghan National Army (ANA) presence. With both districts having large Hazara communities, chances are that Hazaras will often face such incidents, but such road blocks also hit the local Pashtun population.
Nevertheless, soon after this incident, social media users and news agencies started speculating about Hazaras being systematically targeted, quickly jumping from assumption to ‘fact’. The Shia News Association, an Iran-based news agency, for example, tweeted about a “continuation of Hazara kidnappings.”
The third incident (Farah)
On 17 March 2015, another ‘Hazara kidnapping’ was reported, this time from Farah province. Tolo News said six Hazaras traveling from Herat were abducted by masked gunmen. However, according to Farah governor Asef Nang there had not been a kidnapping of Hazaras; rather, he said, Afghan soldiers “went missing” on the way from Farah to Herat province. He did not even want to confirm that the soldiers had been kidnapped (with the governor later speaking of only one abducted soldier). It also remains unclear how many of the potential victims were Hazara, with local media reporting, for example, four out of the six being Hazara (see here). It seems likely that if the six had indeed been abducted, insurgents took them because they were soldiers. AAN, talking to locals and security officials, could not find evidence for this incident being specifically Hazara-related.
The fourth incident: Daikundi
A few days later, on 25 March 2015, Afghan media reported another ‘Hazara kidnapping’, with the Taleban abducting “20 Hazaras” in Daikundi province as they travelled from Kandahar. On the same day, the Taleban rejected the report and said that they had only stopped the vehicle, not detaining anyone, because of the ongoing fighting between them and ANSF in the area and would allow the travellers to pass as soon as the area was safe. They did so on 28 March 2015.
At this point, the BBC also found out that the travellers who had been affected, had not been Hazaras, but rather (Shia) Baloch.
With much of the media apparently not noticing these at least contradictory details of the accounts available, reporting of the incident increased anxiety among Hazaras. One social media user wrote, “I ask all leaders to take action and stop such kidnappings. It is a tragedy that one ethnic group can be targeted like this in today’s Afghanistan.”
Incidents five to seven: Balkh, Sar-e Pul, Ghazni again
Since then, there have been five more incidents which appear to have been wrongly labelled as having deliberately targeted Hazaras, strengthening a picture of Hazaras being pursued despite a weak evidential basis. For example, on 30 March 2015, five men – who were indeed Hazaras – were reportedly kidnapped in Balkh province. However, as also portrayed by the BBC, it seems the victims were probably taken because they were known to be wealthy coal merchants. A provincial council member told AAN that the kidnapper, whom he alleged was a local illegal militia commander, had asked for a ransom. If true, there seems to have been no political or ethnically-motivated agenda behind the abduction.
The Killid Group reported 13 Hazaras as kidnapped in Sar-e Pul’s Balkhab district on 1 April 2015. The Taleban released four of their hostages in early April and the remaining nine on 14 April 2015. The reasons for the abduction remain unclear, but AAN was told by members of the provincial council that the person who had initiated the abduction, the district’s Taleban shadow governor Hashim Quraishi, was Hazara himself. Local officials said, “Well, this kind of thing happens all the time.” (As an example of “this kind of thing” happening “all the time”, armed men, kidnapped 12 people on 11 January 2015 in Sar-e Pul and, after killing two of them, released the rest. However, as ‘Hazara kidnaps’ were not yet on the radar, the ethnic identities of the hostages were not reported at the time.)
Another reported ‘Hazara kidnapping’ on 1 April 2015, again in Ghazni’s Qarabagh district, involved a group of gunmen stopping two cars with 20 passengers – who were indeed Hazara – and taking them hostage for a day. However, it transpired that the travellers were random victims taken with the aim of creating leverage over the police. Before the kidnapping, a local girl had delivered herself to the police and been taken to a shelter in neighbouring Jaghori district. It is not clear why the girl had sought shelter, but the hostages were released after police brought her back to her family (leading one to wonder about the current situation and the safety of the girl; read AAN’s reports on domestic violence and the role of the authorities here).
The eighth incident
Finally, the most recent ‘crime against Hazaras’ was reported on 14 April 2015 in Ajrestan district of Ghazni province, a Pashtun district surrounded by largely Hazara-populated areas, including Jaghori district, Nawur district and Daikundi province. Four Hazaras (from Malestan district) were kidnapped and, soon after, killed. AAN spoke to local Hazaras in Malestan who said they were at a loss as to why such a thing had happened, “We have not had tensions between Pashtuns and Hazaras here in 25 years,” they said. Here too, the perpetrators appear to have had goals other than ethnically-motivated ones. Ghazni’s deputy governor, Muhammad Ali Ahmadi, told Deutsche Welle that the Taleban had taken the four as leverage in an attempt to negotiate the release from jail of their commander and his men, who had been arrested the day before in Jaghori district. The Taleban released a statement condemning the killing and rejecting any involvement, though. They blamed “Kabul’s spies,” meaning the NDS, of trying to “cause ethnic and sectarian violence.”
Routine behaviour for the Taleban
So, what to make of this series of incidents? From what the Afghan media and activists have reported, one could construct a coherent picture of systematic violence against Hazaras (see for example here, here and here). The Wall Street Journal said on 20 April 2015 that “Afghanistan has largely been spared the sectarian strife that plagues other parts of the Muslim world, but many Hazaras see the kidnapping as an indication they, too, now are a target.” And the New York Times wrote, on 22 April 2015: “A wave of kidnappings followed by numerous beheadings of members of Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic group have spread alarm and anger among a people who historically have been this country’s most persecuted.” But this picture is both misled and misleading.
Take the NYT piece for example. The piece was headlined, “Taliban are said to target Hazaras to try to match ISIS’ brutality”. Yet, its report that the four men from Malestan (case eight) had been beheaded (its source for this was the Ghazni police) does not seem to have been true. AAN was told by family members and neighbours, who had buried the four men on Monday, that the corpses were intact. They had not been beheaded they said: “They were simply shot.” The New York Times article also claimed an additional case of brutality against Hazaras: six men from Daikundi who were ‘found dead’ in Ajirestan district. However, none of the security officials, local journalists, residents and two MPs from Daikundi contacted by AAN had heard of any killing in the province in recent weeks.
There also appears to be some problem with the sampling. Strangely, the incidents claimed as Hazara-targeted are mostly kidnappings. If Hazaras were indeed being targeted, there would surely be other, less personnel-intensive and more varied opportunities of harm, such as drive-by shootings, assassinations or robberies. In general, it is not unusual for Taleban to stop and hold travellers – of all ethnicities – and interrogate and search them. Doing so, they usually try to identify those who are earning their living as soldiers or government officials, or others associated with the state. It also serves as a convenient way to generally intimidate the civilian population, projecting the Taleban’s power over people’s daily lives. There have been, over the years, many examples of such incidents – including on the road that featured in two of the recent incidents, the insecure Qarabagh road to Jaghori district of Ghazni, which locals call “a nightmare.” In short, the reported ‘Hazara kidnappings’ in Qarabagh on 15 March 2015, in Farah on 17 March 2015, in Daikundi on 25 March 2015 and in Sar-e Pul on 1 April 2015 look to be fairly routine behaviour for the Taleban and carried out regardless of the ethnicity of travellers.
And then, of course, there have been other, similar incidents over the past months – whether insurgent, criminal or personal – that hit Pashtuns or Tajiks or Uzbeks. Two recent ‘non-Hazara kidnappings’ were the five – Pashtun – NGO workers killed on 10 April in Uruzgan (reason yet unknown) and the 19 staff (ethnicity not reported) of a demining NGO kidnapped by a group of armed men in Paktia because, AAN was told by one source, they had been clearing an area that the Afghan government wanted to use for a future military camp. Two days later the deminers were released.
Scrutinising the individual incidents which activists and media are citing, there seems to be, for now, no evidence that Hazara are being systematically targeted (the Zabul abduction of the 31 bus passengers is the only case where it seems Hazaras may have been targeted, but even there the initial motivation and the goal of the kidnappers remains unclear).
Yet the fear is real
However, the reaction to the reporting – and sometimes the reporting itself – clearly shows that Hazaras feel very vulnerable. Hazaras generally live in areas where traveling means navigating passes through high, otherwise impassable mountains and through areas where other groups predominate. Hazaras are easily identifiable and, although there are some Sunni and Ismaili Hazaras, the group is largely perceived as Shia. Afghanistan has experienced ethnic-based bloodshed in the past during the war, with Hazaras as both victims and perpetrators – although sectarianism of the kind seen in Pakistan, Iraq and now Syria has been rare. Nevertheless, there is a fear that insurgents and other groups might change tactics.
The reasoning sounds like this: The Taleban, although currently presenting themselves as a national movement for all Afghans regardless of sect or ethnicity, are largely made up of Sunni Pashtun mullahs. Also, this year has seen an increase in foreign fighters moving into Afghanistan after Pakistani operations drove them out of their stronghold in North Waziristan last summer. These fighters tend to be more vicious and more reckless than the Taleban (it is not their country, after all) and potentially more sectarian-minded. The savagely sectarian Islamic State might also gain ground in the country (although, see AAN reporting here on how the Daesh threat has so far been overblown). Moreover, other countries in the region with previously harmonious intra-ethnic and intra-sect relations (such as Syria and Yemen) have recently descended into bloody, sectarian chaos.
The recent trend of reporting kidnappings as aimed at Hazaras , for the moment, appears to say less about the actual dynamics and trends within the insurgency (or among criminal elements), but a great deal about how vulnerable Hazaras feel about their safety.
(1) More recently, a video clip with the logo of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was released that shows two masked men beheading an Afghan Army soldier and asking the government to respond to what they say is their demand or they will kill all hostages. Some news agencies like BBC World reported the soldier was one of the Zabul hostages, although the IMU fighters do not specifically mention the 31 hostages or indeed specify their demand to the government. It is also not clear if the beheaded soldier, who was from Andarab district of Baghlan province, was among the 31 hostages. He was certainly not Hazara. After the linking of this murder to the Zabul hostages, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) swiftly said the soldier had not been among the Zabul hostages.
Eurozone Ministers meet on 24 April 2015, in Riga, to discuss the economic situation, growth and jobs.
Migratory pressure in the Mediterranean is the main topic of this special European Council of 23 April 2015, called by Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, after the dramatic sinking of migrant ships off the Libyan coast.