Quote 1
[Assef:] "But before you sacrifice yourself for him, think about this: Would he do the same for you? Have you ever wondered why he never includes you in games when he has guests? Why he only plays with you when no one else is around? I'll tell you why, Hazara. Because to him, you're nothing but an ugly pet. Something he can play with when he's bored, something he can kick when he's angry. Don't ever fool yourself and think you're something more."
"Amir agha and I are friends," Hassan said. He looked flushed.
"Friends?" Assef said, laughing. "You pathetic fool! Someday you'll wake up from your little fantasy and learn just how good of a friend he is. Now, bas! Enough of this. Give us that kite." (7.106-108)
This is a fairly complex scene. Assef, before he assaults and rapes Hassan, asks Hassan whether he really wants to sacrifice himself for Amir. We know Amir is listening in – and watching – this exchange between Assef and Hassan. In a way, Assef's speech is not prophetic but descriptive: Amir is abandoning Hassan right now. However, we wonder if Assef's description is inaccurate. Is Assef describing his own relationship with Hazaras or Amir's with Hassan? Sure, sometimes Amir does cruel things to Hassan, but he also reads to Hassan and spends almost all his free time with Hassan. Amir may hesitate to call Hassan his friend, but perhaps that's because neither "friend" nor "servant" really describes Hassan. "Brother" might do the trick, but Amir has no idea at this point.
His [Assef's] blue eyes flicked to Hassan. "Afghanistan is the land of Pashtuns. It always has been, always will be. We are the true Afghans, the pure Afghans, not this Flat-Nose here. His people pollute our homeland, our watan. They dirty our blood." He made a sweeping, grandiose gesture with his hands. "Afghanistan for Pashtuns, I say. That's my vision." (5.44)
This guy Assef is a jerk. And just plain evil. His misguided sentiment, though, informs the Taliban massacre Assef participates in at Mazar-i-Sharif. It also informed the Holocaust. (Hosseini consciously references the German concentration camps: Assef's mother is German and Assef actually admires Hitler.) Purity works for some things, like water and grain alcohol, but not the ethnic makeup of a country.
Quote 3
He [Assef] leaned toward me, like a man about to share a great secret. "You don't know the meaning of the word 'liberating' until you've done that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you're doing God's work. It's breathtaking." He kissed the prayer beads, tilted his head. [...].
I had read about the Hazara massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif in the papers. It had happened just after the Taliban took over Mazar, one of the last cities to fall. I remembered Soraya handing me the article over breakfast, her face bloodless.
[Assef:] "[...]. 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." (22.24-26)
Since ethnicity and religion intertwine inextricably in the Afghanistan of The Kite Runner, Assef justifies ethnic cleansing through religion. This is problematic. Assef has ultimate justification – God's will – for what amounts to murder. (We can imagine the daily and more common persecutions this justification must bring about as well.) Although Hosseini paints Assef as an extreme character, in the end Hosseini sheds some light on the bizarre and false justifications of ethnic prejudices in Afghanistan.