Najaf: Many Afghans from Ethnic Hazara who studied in the city of Najaf Iraq watched terror when their homeland returned to the hands of the Taliban.
And while they feel safe for now, they are afraid of their families at home and for their own safety if they ever return.
Millions of Shiite pilgrims come every year for Najaf to lament the death of the prophet son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad Ali, who is a mausoleum standing in the old city.
Others, such as Sheikh Ali Bassir, 51, have spent years studying in the prestigious seminary who trained Shiite priests.
“I really want to serve so much Afghans, I want to go back, but the situation is not normal,” said Bassir, surrounded by racks that bear the copy of the Qur’an while the ceiling fan changed above.
His calm smile changed from wood when he considered the fate of the people of Hazara, which formed between 10 and 20 percent of the 38 million Afghans and had long been persecuted because of their faith in a deep division.
With the Taliban again in control since last month, the majority of the Shiite Muslim group was worried, the harder Sunni, could return to them as happened during the previous 1996-2001 government.
Thousands of Hazara are believed to have been slaughtered by militants.
The picture of the destruction of two large Buddhist statues carved into cliffs in Hazara Province, most of Bamiyan went throughout the world in March 2001.
Just a few days after the return of Taliban, the leading leader of Hazara leader in Bamiyan was beheaded.
Margaded and persecuted – many Afghans and the international community still remember the brutal treatment of Hazaras in the hands of the Taliban.
“My brother and sister in Afghanistan.
They are far from the capital, in the countryside, thank God.
They are fine,” said Bass.
But he added that he was “afraid of how the Taliban would take control of Shia,” showing a video on the telephone fighters hard uniting the demonstration he said was made of Hazara.
For centuries, groups have experienced slavery, abuse of religious and economic, and forced displacement.
With some estimates, almost half of the population Hazara was abolished at the end of the 19th century, with many who were then enslaved during the conquest of their traditional homeland by Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country.
Sunni extremists continued to target Hazaras in the attack even after the US-led invasion in 2001.
In May, 50 people were killed near the school of girls in the Hazara district in Kabul.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was widely blamed in the Islamic group chapter.
– ‘Iraqi in the heart’ – The son of the 21-year-old Bassir Mustafa listened attentively from the corner of his father’s study.
National Afghanistan, he felt “Iraqi in the heart” after being born and raised there.
Even in other countries that were exhaled for 40 years of war, “I prefer to live in Najaf, it’s safer,” he said in a fluent Arabic and local accented.
Hazara’s colleague Sheikh Mohammed Taqi, in his 20s, wanted to bring his family to Iraq from Herat Province Western Afghanistan.
“My mother, my sister and my wife are still there,” he said.
“I’m very scared for them …
a woman can’t leave her house anymore without her husband.” But “We don’t know how to get a visa or even a passport” for travel, Taqi said, as “no more state” in Afghanistan.
Sheikh Qorban Ali, a 26-year-old child from the northern city of Afghanistan Mazar-I-Sharif, dreamed of home.
But he said that for now “the situation means students cannot go and spread their message”.
But he would be happy to obey whether the Shiite Authority in Najaf gave orders, stating that “we must leave if possible”.