Muslims who generally view Hazaras with contempt. Traditionally, the Pashtuns have discriminated against the Hazara people in Afghanistan, which is depicted in the novel by the treatment of Hassan and his father, Ali. The Pashtun citizens of Kabul continually ridicule and make fun of Hassan and Ali. They direct derogatory comments toward them and ridicule Hassan's Asian features. Both Ali and Hassan live in poverty and serve Baba and Amir, who are Pashtuns. Despite being longtime friends with Ali and Hassan, Baba and Amir refuse to openly acknowledge their friendship because of social restrictions and taboos. Baba even hides the fact that he is Hassan's biological father, because he is a Pashtun and Hassan is a Hazara.

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner attempts to paint a true picture of life in Afghanistan during the final decades of the 20th century, and his descriptions of Hazara life and the discrimination against them appear to be accurate. In the novel, Ali and Hassan are both considered inferior by many of the people they encounter; Baba, of course, loves them both and considers them part of his family. The Hazaras became a particular target of the Taliban, and both Hassan and his wife are later executed by them.

The Hazaras, primarily Shia Muslims, make up less than 10% of the population of Afghanistan--far less than the ruling Pashtun and Tajik tribes. The Hazaras are believed to have Mongol roots, and an ethnic cleansing of the group was undertaken in the 19th century by Emir Abdur Rahman. Today, the Hazaras still mistrust Afghan rule, and they faced social, economic and political restraints throughout most of the 20th century. In the 1990s, the Taliban publicly targeted the Hazaras for ethnic cleansing, and Hassan was just one of the examples of this action.

Today, with the new American-backed Kabul government, Hazaras enjoy a better life, with increased educational and socioeconomic opportunities. Their original homeland, Hazarajat, however, is still woefully underfunded by the government, and the Hazara there  primarily raise livestock.

Discrimination is poignantly depicted in many ways throughout the novel and is emphasized by the conflicts between characters of different ethnicities and genders. The most blatant examples of discrimination involve the relationship between Pashtuns and Hazaras in Afghanistan. The Hazara minorities are discriminated against by their privileged Pashtun neighbors. Characters like Ali, Hassan, Sohrab, and Sanaubar have fewer rights and opportunities than Pashtuns like Baba, Amir, and Rahim Khan. Hassan cannot attend school, lives in a shack behind Amir's home, is a poor servant, and suffers abuse from Pashtuns on a daily basis. Baba also discriminates against Hazaras by refusing to acknowledge Hassan as his biological son due to social pressure.

Farid initially discriminates against Amir because he is a wealthy American. Farid envies Amir's situation and believes that he is simply coming to Afghanistan to sell his land before returning to America with more money.

Soraya's father, General Taheri, is a Pashtun who discriminates against female independence by criticizing his daughter's dream of becoming a teacher. Like many Pashtuns, General Taheri also discriminates against Sohrab because he is a Hazara.

There are so many reasons why people discriminate against each other. In light of this, let me name a few of them from the book, The Kite Runner.

From The Kite Runner, there are three major types of discrimination. First, there is racial discrimination. Baba hates all people from the Soviet Union for their occupation of Afghanistan. And it can be presumed that those from the Soviet Union were evil towards the people of Afghanistan. From this perspective, we can say that racial problems have existed as far as human civilization.

Second, there is also social and economic discrimination. For example, Hasan was from a different social class. There is a pretty strong separation between those who have and those who do not gave. Moreover, we can see that this carries over to America, when Baba treats general Taheri well, in view of his social standing.

Third, there is some discrimination among gender. Women are treated with less respect than men in some ways. For example, Soraya is treated differently because she had a intimate relationship before marriage.

There are several times in The Kite Runner when Khaled Hosseini discusses the Hazaras, and most of them are in connection with the most noble characters in the novel: Hassan and his father Ali. Unfortunately, any description of the Hazara must also include a recounting of the abuse they have suffered for centuries at the hands of the Pashtuns. 

Hassan and Ali are Hazaras, the ethnic people in Afghanistan who are the lower and more despised class. They are easily recognizable because they look differently than the ruling class, the Pashtuns. Amir describes Hassan this way:

They called him "flat-nosed" because of Ali and Hassan's characteristic Hazara Mongoloid features. For years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras, that they were Mogul descendants, and that they looked a little like Chinese people.

The Hazaras are of the Shi'a religion, and in the novel Amir knows little about them until he reads a book from his father's library, since they are barely even mentioned in school textbooks. Amir is stunned to find an entire chapter given to the Hazaras, something he had barely ever even given a thought to, despite his growing up with Hassan. Without saying it, Amir is admitting that the Hazaras are not worthy of any attention or study. He reads that

the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had "quelled them with unspeakable violence." The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi'a. The book said a lot of things I didn't know.... It also said some things I did know, like that people called Hazaras mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. 

The fact that the Hazara look so different from the Pashtuns makes them an easy target for ridicule and worse, as in the case of Assef's assault of Hassan. 

One other description (both physical and social) comes from Amir as an adult looking back on his relationship with Hassan, a Hazara:

The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. Not in the usual sense, anyhow. Never mind that we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional homemade camera out of a cardboard box. Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites. Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile.

Never mind any of those things. Because history isn't easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi'a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.

This is a vivid reminder that what the Hazara look like is one thing that separates the Hazara, from the Pashtuns, but the divide goes much deeper than that. A history of racial and religious division is not something which can be easily surmounted in a society or in a friendship. Even at the end of the novel, when Amir has come to regret his treatment of Hassan, the divide is still almost insurmountable.

The discussion of rights between these two ethnic groups in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner is a little tricky, because for the first part of the novel the differences are expressed in treatments, not rights. Once the Taliban moves into Afghanistan, the term rights is certainly applicable.

Before the Taliban arrives, the Pashtuns are the ruling class. They are the people with all the power, wealth, and position. Baba's family is a good example of how things worked for the Pashtuns and Hazara at this time. 

Baba owns a large estate and was married to a Pashtun woman, so Amir is a full Pashtun--and he is well aware of it because Baba makes sure to make it clear. Baba's loyal and kind servant is Ali, who is a Hazara. Ali and his wife are both Hazara, as is their son, Hassan. While Hassan and Amir grow up together in a lovely way, they are not equals and they both know it. Amir has a bit of an epiphany when he reads in one of the books in his father's library. 

For years, ...all I knew about the Hazaras [was] that they were Mogul descendants, and that they looked a little like Chinese people. School text books barely mentioned them and referred to their ancestry only in passing. 

I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had "quelled them with unspeakable violence." The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi'a. The book said a lot of things I didn't know, things my teachers hadn't mentioned. Things Baba hadn't mentioned either. It also said some things I did know, like that people called Hazaras mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.

Rahim Khan, Baba's business partner and family friend, tells Amir about loving a Hazara girl when he was much younger. 

"You should have seen the look on my father's face when I told him. My mother actually fainted. My sisters splashed her face with water. They fanned her and looked at me as if I had slit her throat. My brother Jalal actually went to fetch his hunting rifle before my father stopped him." Rahim Khan barked a bitter laughter. "It was Homaira and me against the world. And I'll tell you this, Amir jan: In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things." 

So you see, it is less about actual rights than it is about history and practice. 

Once the Taliban (which is comprised primarily of Pashtuns) takes over, the real persecution of the Hazaras begins. Assef, the bully who raped Hassan, is now a Taliban leader. He has always believed in ethnic cleansing (remember his admiration for Hitler) and hated the Hazaras, but now he has the power to act on his hatred. He routinely guns down innocent Hazaras without remorse and calls it "God's work."

"We left the bodies in the streets, and if their families tried to sneak out to drag them back into their homes, we'd shoot them too. We left them in the streets for days. We left them for the dogs. Dog meat for dogs."

Once the Taliban arrives, the Hazaras have no rights and live only at the mercy of the Pashtuns. 

In the end, Amir is raising Hassan's son, so perhaps there is some hope for change. 

One way in which the Pashtun are able to take advantage of the Hazara exists in the level of power the former holds in Afghan social settings.  Members of the Pashtun possess more economic, political, and social power than the Hazara people.  They are able to exert this power in marginalizing the Hazara.  No better is this seen than with Assef.  Born into a privileged Pashtun family, Assef advocates the purification of Afghanistan in eliminating the Hazara.  

Assef embodies how the Pashtun take advantage of the Hazara.  He understands that the Hazara are marginalized and kept on the periphery of social voice.  He is able to harness this into a platform that advocates their rejection. As individuals like Assef become members of the Taliban, the Hazara experience further marginalization. The Taliban, largely Pashtun, were able to use political power to advance their agenda of repression against the Hazara.  This reflects how they were able to take advantage of the social marginalization that the Hazara experienced in order to consolidate their own political power.