History of the Pashtun of Afghanistan Afghanistan nowadays has a reputation for its futile wars, but in the past, the Pastun, the country’s upper class, had a problem with prejudice against other races. Pashtuns consider themselves better than other races in the country especially Hazara, even a kid in Afghanistan is influenced by the racial discrimination of the Hazara. An example of this is “The book said a lot of things I didn’t know, things my teachers hadn’t mentioned…It also said some things I did know, like that people called Hazaras mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys.”(Khaled Houssini, Kite Runner, Chapter 2). The Pashtun regard themselves as better than all, especially the Hazara, because they are Sunni Muslims. The majority of Muslims in Afghanistan today is Sunni Muslims, which influence the minority Shia who are mostly the Hazara in the country because Sunni never sees Shia as the same term when it is regarding their religion. They have different beliefs and rules which Sunni is more modern with less strict rules but Shia tends to be more traditional and stick to the Koran more. Furthermore, their belief system in Islam history is also another factor of the result of bloodshed that ultimately leads to the side with more population being more dominant. In this case, it is the Pashtun. Add on to the religious aspect, the belief that they are the origin of Afghanistan is also another factor of their dominance as they granted themselves as the true Afghanis. Pashtun are originally part of one of the biggest tribal lineages in the world. Between the 13th and 16th centuries, they made their way to both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but primarily Afghanistan, which to this day makes up 42% of the population. They are regarded as the original founders of the Afghan Kingdom and, up until recently, appeared to have had a disproportionate amount of administrative control. By understanding the reasons why, the Pashtun are the most dominant group in Afghanistan we can ultimately conclude that no matter where we are as well as the countries we are located there is always discrimination and inequality in the world that we sometimes forget and those people get little to no attention from other parts of the world. Work citation Pashtun People, www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/p/Pashtun_people.htm. Accessed 14 May 2023. World Directory of Minorities - United States Department of Justice, www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2014/02/19/Pashtuns.pdf. Accessed 14 May 2023. Ghosh, Bobby. “Why They Hate Each Other: Behind the Sunni-Shi’ite Divide.” Time, 5 Mar. 2007, https://time.com/2899942/iraq-why-they-hate-each-other-behind-the-sunnishiite-divide/ Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. Doubleday Canada, 2022.
