Ethnic violence in Afghanistan

Ethnic violence in Afghanistan has played a role in the wars in Afghanistan.

There are about a dozen ethnic groups in Afghanistan, they include: Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and others who make up less than 2% each. The most recent figures on the ethnic affiliations comes from a survey conducted by the Asia Foundation in 2014. According to the representative survey, 40% of the people identified themselves as Pashtun, 36% as Tajik, 10% as Hazara, 8% as Uzbek, 2% as Turkmen, 1% as Baloch, 1% as Nuristani, 1% as Aimaq, 1% as Arab, 1% as Pashaye, 1% as Sadat, 0.5% as Qizilbash, and 0.5% as Safi.

After the Taliban rose to power in the mid 1990s, they began committing atrocities against their opponents, the Shias Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks. In 1998, the United Nations accused the Taliban of denying emergency food by the UN's World Food Program to 160,000 hungry and starving people (most of whom were Hazaras and Tajiks) "for political and military reasons". The UN said the Taliban were starving people for their military agenda and using humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war.

On August 8, 1998 the Taliban launched an attack on Mazar-i Sharif. Once in control the Taliban began to kill people indiscriminately based on their ethnicity especially Hazaras and Uzbeks. Men, women and children were hunted by Taliban forces in response to between 1500-3000 Taliban fighters executed by the Uzbek Junbish-i Milli militia. This ethnic cleansing left an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 dead.

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