Niamatullah Ibrahimi presents in the fifth volume of the Crossroads Asia Working Paper Series the results of his six-month Crossroads Asia Fellowship at the Center for Development Studies (ZEFL) at Freie Universität Berlin. He analyzes the evolution of an ethnic and political group identity of the Hazara of central Afghanistan in historical perspective. The author shows how recurrent conflicts, ethno-religious prosecution and related processes of mobility and migration have shaped and facilitated the development of a joint ethno-political Hazara identity.