Qualla: Hazara Town

Hazara Town: Introduction

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1908, a man named Haji Nasir Ali bought a stretch of land on the western outskirts of Quetta from a local Syed family and began building houses. He was Hazara, an ethnic group with Central Asian roots and distinctive features that marked them as different in Afghanistan -- different enough to be targeted. Hazaras had been trickling into Balochistan since the 1880s, fleeing the campaigns of Afghan emir Abdur Rahman Khan, who between 1891 and 1893 waged a systematic subjugation of the Hazara homeland, Hazarajat. What Haji Nasir Ali built was not just housing. It was a foothold for a displaced people, the beginning of what would grow into Hazara Town -- nine blocks, 800,000 residents, and a community that turned the geography of exile into something that looks, a century later, remarkably like home.

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Hazara Town: The First Arrivals

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The earliest Hazaras reached Quetta after the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-1880. There could not have been more than a few hundred at first, men seeking work with British-run companies under the Raj. They built roads. They helped lay the Bolan Pass railway. Some enlisted in th...

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Hazara Town: Pioneers and Regiments

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When Abdur Rahman Khan's son Habibullah took power in 1901, he offered the Hazaras amnesty. Few took it. Life in Afghanistan had taught them what amnesty was worth, and many had already committed to rebuilding in Quetta. In 1904, the British formed the 106th Hazara Pioneers, a de...

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Hazara Town: Wave After Wave

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Each crisis in Afghanistan sent another wave of Hazaras toward Quetta. The drought of 1971 drove families across the border in search of work. Between 1973 and 1978, President Daud Khan's conflict with Pakistan over the Pushtunistan issue turned Hazaras into political pawns -- su...

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Hazara Town: Building on Concrete

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Today, Hazara Town stretches from Brewery Road near Bolan Medical College to Kirani Road, nine blocks of concrete houses and a population of approximately 800,000. The community is overwhelmingly Hazara, with smaller populations of Pashtuns, Baloch, and Sayeds. Residents speak Ha...

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