ABSTRACT
On 20 August 2009, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai won a reelection by a sizeable majority. He did so only after winning the crucial support of the Shii Hazaras, a group that have gone from being a despised, unofficial caste in Afghanistan to self-described “king makers.” 1 In the largest sense, the story of this repressed ethnic group's rise to prominence in a country long dominated by their Sunni rivals has widespread applications for understanding the often competing roles of Shiism and ethnicity in the Middle East and Central Asia. In a narrower sense, it is also the story of how Afghanistan's most despised ethnic group has overcome tremendous obstacles to carve out a niche for itself in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
