Nasim Fekrat

NASIM FEKRAT, then a graduate student at University of California, Irvine, California, received a grant in April 2023 to aid research on “The Entangled Legacies of Afghanistan: Occupation, Exile and Hazara Struggles for Belonging,” supervised by Dr. Sherine Hamdy. In the aftermath of U.S. troop withdrawal in August 2021, approximately over 122,000 individuals were evacuated from Afghanistan. Of this number, over a thousand are Hazaras, an ethnic minority who fled the country. Since the Taliban’s return to power, the Hazara are now again at risk of targeted massacres and policies aimed at their subjugation and/or eradication. Under U.S. military presence, Hazaras — and, notably, many women among them — assumed prominent political positions, including vice presidents, ministers, governors, mayors, and judges. Washington, DC, became a new home for these former government officials and hundreds of Hazara human rights activists, writers, journalists, scholars, translators, and others considered “at-risk” for aiding the U.S. government in the past 20 years. During the 12 months of his fieldwork in Washington, DC, the grantee investigated the experiences of Hazaras who went from occupying prominent societal roles under the U.S. occupation to exiled refugees today, seeing their state-building efforts currently being undone by the return of Taliban rule. Further, it seeks to understand how the Hazaras are currently experiencing their recent immigration to the U.S.