Facing ISIS, last embattled Sikhs, Hindus leave Afghanistan
KABUL: Afghanistan's dwindling community of Sikhs and Hindus is shrinking to its lowest levels. With growing threats from the local Islamic State
affiliate, many are choosing to leave the country of their birth to
escape the insecurity and a once-thriving community of as many as
250,000 members now counts fewer than 700.
The community's numbers
have been declining for years because of deep-rooted discrimination in
the majority Muslim country. But, without what they say is adequate
protection from the government, the attacks by the Islamic State group
may complete the exodus.
“We are no longer able to stay here,”
said a member of the tiny community, who asked to be identified only by
his last name, Hamdard, out of fear he may be targeted for speaking out.
Hamdard said seven relatives of his, including his sister, nephews, and
son-in-law were killed by Islamic State gunmen in an attack on the
Gurdwara in March, which killed 25 Sikhs.
Hamdard said that fleeing
his homeland is as difficult as leaving a mother behind. Still, he
joined a group of Sikhs and Hindus who left Afghanistan last month for
India, from where they will eventually move on to a third country.
Although Sikhism and Hinduism are two distinct religions with their own holy books and temples, in Afghanistan the communities are interwoven, having been driven into a kinship by their tiny size, and they both gather under one roof or a single temple to worship, each following their own faith.
File: Afghan Sikh
men mourn their beloved ones during a funeral procession for those who
were killed by a lone Islamic State gunman in a Gurdwara in Kabul.
The
community has suffered widespread discrimination in the conservative
Muslim country, with each government “threatening us their own way,”
said Hamdard, whose home was seized by warlords after the US invasion in
2001, forcing him to live in one of two Sikh temples in the Afghan
capital of Kabul.
Under Taliban rule in the late 1990s, Sikhs and
Hindus were asked to identify themselves by wearing yellow armbands, but
after a global outcry, the rule was not enforced.
Also driving the
exodus is the inability to reclaim Sikh homes, businesses and houses of
worship that were illegally seized years ago.
Hindu temples in
Kabul's old city were destroyed during brutal fighting between rival
warlords from 1992-96. The fighting drove out scores of Hindu and Sikh
Afghans.
Aside from the March attack by IS gunmen, a 2018 Islamic
State suicide attack in the city of Jalalabad killed 19 people, most of
them Sikhs, including a longtime leader who had nominated himself for
the Afghan parliament.
“Suffering big fatalities for a small
community is not tolerable,” said Charan Singh Khalsa, a leader of the
Sikh community living abroad, who declined to say where he was living
out of fear for his safety.
He left Afghanistan after his brother was kidnapped and killed in an attack by gunmen in Kabul two years ago.
He said the last three years have been the worst period for all Afghans, but especially so for Sikhs and Hindus.
Community leaders have slammed recent governments for failing to step up security in the face of the IS threat.
Afghanistan's
government in 2010 decided to dedicate a chair in the national assembly
to religious minorities, and there have since been two Sikh
representatives.
But Khalsa called these posts “symbolic”. He
criticized the government for taking too long to grant political
representation powers to the community and for failing to “provide
security to our places of worship.”
A senior Sikh community leader
told The Associated Press that the group is in negotiations with the
government over its security needs and the repairing of the temple after
it was destroyed in March's attack. The community leader spoke on
condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the
negotiations with the media.
At a press conference last month,
President Ashraf Ghani's spokesman, Sediq Sediqqi, said that members of
the Afghan Sikh and Hindu community will return once peace is restored.
The president's office did not respond to a request for comment from the
AP, but other Afghan officials have pledged to assist the community.
“We
will use all our facilities to provide security to the people,”
Interior Ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said, without elaborating. “We
are committed and responsible for their (Sikhs and Hindus) mental and
personal security.” It is not clear what kind of security measures are
being discussed, nor when they might be seen on the ground.
Until
then, the community's flight is accelerating, with large numbers of
Sikhs and Hindus continuing a recent trend of seeking asylum in India.
In
August, a group of 176 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus went to India on special
visas. They were the second batch since March, with the first 11
members arriving in India in July.
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