The Massacre of Mazar-e-Sharif (1998)
Incident- Date
- Aug 8, 1998
- Year of incident
- 1998
- Province of incident
- Balkh: Mazar-e Sharif
- District geolocation of incident
Latitude: 36.6940040349316
Longitude: 67.1132463131472
- District geolocation of incident (linked Incident)
- Mazar-e Sharif
- Town/Village
- Mazar-i Sharif
- Types of incident
- Abduction
- Arrest
- Clash
- Complex Attack
- Enforced Disappearance
- Execution
- Forced Marriage
- Ground Attack
- Hand Grenade
- Heavy Weapon Attack
- Light Weapon Attack
- Mortar Shell
- Targeted Killing
- Vehicle-borne Attack
- Conflict parties
- Harakat-e Islami Afghanistan (HIA)
- Hizb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HIG)
- Hizb-e Jabhe Milli Nejat Afghanistan (HJMNA)
- Hizb-e Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan (HWIA)
- Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan (JIA)
- Junbish-e Milli Islami Afghanistan (JMIA)
- Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (MPVPV)
- Taliban
- Alleged types of crimes
- War crime: Attacking civilian objects
- War crime: Attacking civilians
- War crime: Cruel treatment
- War crime: Denying a fair trial
- War crime: Denying quarter
- War crime: Destruction and appropriation of property
- War crime: Displacing civilians
- War crime: Enforced prostitution
- War crime: Excessive incidental death, injury, or damage
- War crime: Forced pregnancy
- War crime: Inhuman treatment
- War crime: Manifest disproportionality
- War crime: Murder
- War crime: Mutilation
- War crime: Outrages upon personal dignity
- War crime: Pillaging
- War crime: Rape
- War crime: Sexual slavery
- War crime: Sexual violence
- War crime: Starvation
- War crime: Taking hostages
- War crime: Torture
- War crime: Treacherously killing or wounding
- War crime: Unlawful confinement
- War crime: Wilful killing
- War crime: Wilfully causing great suffering
- Act of genocide: Causing serious bodily or mental harm
- Act of genocide: Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction
- Act of genocide: Forcibly transferring children
- Act of genocide: Imposing measures intended to prevent births
- Act of genocide: Killing
- Crime against humanity: Enforced disappearance
- Crime against humanity: Enslavement
- Crime against humanity: Extermination
- Crime against humanity: Murder
- Crime against humanity: Other inhumane acts
- Crime against humanity: Persecution
- Crime against humanity: Rape
- Crime against humanity: Sexual slavery
- Crime against humanity: Sexual violence
- Crime against humanity: Torture
- Regime in place
- Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan
- Summary of incident
On August 8, 1998, Taliban fighters captured the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan after a successful offensive against the United Front opposition forces. In the hours after seizing control of the city, Taliban troops killed scores of civilians through indiscriminate attacks, shooting noncombatants and suspected combatants alike in residential areas and public spaces. Hundreds of people, mostly Hazara civilians, were killed as the panicked population attempted to flee or evade the gunfire. In the following days, Taliban forces carried out systematic searches for male members of Hazara ethnic groups like the Hazara in mostly Hazara-dominated neighborhoods.
Thousands of Hazara men and boys were summarily executed during these house-to-house searches, seemingly to eliminate any potential resistance preemptively. The Hazaras, mainly a Shi'a Persian-speaking ethnic group, were specifically targeted, likely due to both their ethnicity and religious identity viewed as heretical by the fundamentalist Sunni Taliban. Thousands more men were detained and transported in cramped container trucks to jails in other cities, with many dying of asphyxiation or heat stroke during transit. Though precise totals are unknown, Human Rights Watch believes at least 2,000 civilians may have been killed in Mazar during this period. However, according to some other sources, including local victims’ families, 5000-8000 people were killed or disappeared.
The killings of Hazara civilians appear to have been retaliatory for the deaths of thousands of Taliban prisoners after an earlier failed 1997 offensive to capture Mazar, for which the Taliban blamed the Hazara fighters. Reports also indicate that girls and women, particularly from Hazara neighborhoods, were raped, abducted, and disappeared by Taliban forces during the takeover of the city. While local Pashtun militias, including Hizb-i Islami fighters, collaborated with the Taliban assault as well as in identifying local Hazara populations. Witnesses state senior Taliban leaders, including Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, were involved in overseeing and permitting g the atrocities to continue for several days.
According to Human Rights Watch, Mulla Manon Niazi delivered speeches at mosques throughout the city, sometimes several in one day, threatening Hazaras for being Shia and urging them to convert, leave Afghanistan, or face death and warn other residents that they would also be punished if they protected Hazaras.
- Source_1
- Source_2
- No of victims involved
- 2000