Since 1992 Islamic extremists have looted and killed Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan
Gurdwara Karte Parwan, Kabul, before it was attacked by Islamic extremists. Courtesy: Wikipedia
June 20, 2022
About 110 Sikhs and Hindus, the last of their communities living in Afghanistan, are expected to leave shortly for India. The Indian government granted them emergency visas, which they have been awaiting since 2021. This follows an attack last week on a Gurdwara, Sikh temple, in the Afghan capital of Kabul that killed two persons, a Sikh and a Muslim security guard.
"Those of us left here are only here because we don't have visas, no-one wants to stay here,” Sukhbir Singh Khalsa told a BBC reporter in Kabul. Tomorrow the attacks “will happen again, and then again after that."
An Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, which lasted three hours and included the use of a car bomb, grenades and submachine guns. The car bomb exploded before it could hit its target, the last remaining Gurdwara in Kabul which was sheltering about 30 Sikhs. The attackers were killed by the police.
In the early 1990’s, there were around 200,000 Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan, mainly in Kabul, Jalalabad and Ghazni. They were traders, businessmen and craftsmen and relatively prosperous minority communities. Since then, Islamic extremists made it impossible for these minority communities to stay in the country, notes a report by the World Sikh Organization of Canada. This is especially true for the Sikhs who are easy to identify given the turbans they wear for religious reasons.
In March 2020, a lone Islamic State gunman killed 25 Sikhs and wounded eight others, including a child, at a Gurdwara in Kabul. Around then there were around 700 Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan. Earlier in 2018, an Islamic State suicide attack in Jalalabad killed 19 people, most of them Sikhs.
In addition to the periodic killings, the Sikhs and Hindus faced extortion, abductions and torture. Local leaders of the Taliban, which now rules Afghanistan, demanded significant amounts of ransom money from the families of their hostages, in exchange for their release.
Using death threats, the Islamic extremists forced some Sikhs and Hindus to convert to Islam. Their homes, land and businesses were forcibly taken over by the extremists. This forced many of them to live in Gurdwaras and temples, like the one that was attacked last week in Kabul.
Members of the two minorities had to pay jizya, a religious tax on non-Muslims. Business owners faced public boycotts announced through the local radio. Afghans stopped hiring Sikhs and Hindus since they faced extortion and threats from the Islamic extremists. They could only find jobs with Sikh or Hindu traders and craftsmen, assuming they had any openings after first hiring their own relatives.
The minorities were harassed during major religious celebrations. They had trouble obtaining land for cremations. Stones were hurled at them when they carried their dead to the crematorium, even under police escort.
It is not surprising that the minorities with the financial resources fled to India and other countries, leaving behind those who could not afford the air tickets and the cost of temporary living in another country. Sikh organizations in Canada collected funds to cover the travel and other costs as well as lobbied the Canadian government to admit more Sikhs and Hindus from Afghanistan into the country.
Gurnam Singh, the president of the Gurdwara in Kabul told The New York Times, “We are all despondent with what happened, and maybe everyone will leave Afghanistan tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. What to do here?”
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