by Ali, Tariq
Dowry deaths—where the husband’s family pockets the dowry and burns the bride—have long been common in Northern India. Until 2005 Nepal had institutionalized a unique form of discrimination against women: menstruating Hindu women were locked in cowsheds, subjected to verbal abuse, and given unhygienic food until they were “clean” again, a torture that lasted four days.
On rare occasions when legal protection becomes impossible, even in Pakistan, the killer-patriarchs throw themselves into the receptive arms of obscurantism. And why not? Each of the three monotheist religions lays down vicious punishments against adultery. The book of Leviticus (20:10) stipulates that both “the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” The Koran has nothing original to add. Not that the monotheists are alone in subjugating women. Hindu custom once decreed the “self-immolation” of widows on the funeral pyre where their dead husbands were cremated. Had Lord Bentinck not banned the procedure in the mid-nineteenth century many a forlorn widow would, no doubt, have mounted the funeral pyre. The Hindu tradition still frowns on widow remarriage. Hindu fundamentalists have attempted to revive the custom, but with limited success.
PAKISTAN HAS the unique distinction of being the only South Asian country where it’s legal to discriminate against women. This was institutionalized via a set of constitutional amendments during the period of General Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship, which brutalized the country’s political culture: there were public hangings and floggings of criminals and dissidents. In 1979 the “Hudood Ordinance” repealed previous laws relating to rape. General Zia was determined to “Islamize” the country, and together with the creation of jihadi groups to fight Charlie Wilson’s war in Afghanistan measures were taken on the domestic front that have proved difficult to reverse. A raped woman could no longer testify against her violator because she was now considered only half a witness. Four adult males were required to corroborate her evidence. By alleging rape, which she was not in a position to prove, the woman admitted to intercourse rendering her liable to prosecution. Add to this the fact that sexual assaults on women are an everyday crime: the Human Rights Commission estimates a rape every three hours. Today, more than 50 percent of women in prison are those accused of adultery (i.e., unproven rape) and are awaiting verdicts. Many of them languish in jail for several months and sometimes years before their case is heard. Acquittals are rare and the most lenient sentence is a year in prison.
Often poor women, who go to a police station and charge a man with rape, are subjected to further sexual abuse by the police, incidents of which multiplied dramatically after the “Islamic laws” were promulgated. Neither Benazir Bhutto nor General Musharraf managed to repeal the anti-women ordinances when they were in power. This gives a carte blanche to honor killers and anyone else. As social and economic conditions deteriorate for a vast majority of the population, women become even more vulnerable.
The treatment of women as subhuman can also be seen in the statistics related to acid and kerosene burn victims. Young girls and women between the ages of fourteen to twenty-five are the usual target of this particular crime. The aim is to disfigure the face and burn the genital region. The reasons vary from case to case: jealousy, imagined infidelity, economic need to get a new bride and dowry, wives refusing sexual favors, and so on. The situation was so bad that the Depilex Smileagain Foundation was created in 2003 as a support group for women who are victims of this type of violence. A few years ago, the Human Rights Commission based in Lahore noted that:
Woman’s subordination remained so routine by custom and traditions, and even putatively by religion, that much of the endemic domestic violence against her was considered normal behavior. . . . A sample survey showed 82 percent of women in rural Punjab feared violence resulting from husbands’ displeasure over minor matters; in the most developed urban areas 52 percent admitted being beaten by husbands.
These statistics indicate that the problem transcends class. It is not the case that the rich and nouveau riche layers are, in general, any more enlightened when it comes to women. For instance, an odious custom in the southern province of Sindh that is restricted to the landed gentry involves marrying off young women to the Koran. This has no religious or legal sanction whatsoever and is denounced by both clerics and liberal reformers, but it occurs nonetheless. Reformers believe that such marriages are not uncommon. There is a proper ceremony. The young bride is ritually bathed after which her husband, the Koran, is put in front of her. She will have to read it every day. Statistics are unavailable, but the practice was highlighted a few years ago. In 2005, Qaisra Sharaz published her novel The Holy Woman, which narrates the story of a young, educated, highly intelligent woman married in this fashion. The reason for these “marriages” is simple. It’s a male device to prevent a sister or daughter from taking her share of the property when she weds. Leading members of Parliament, including the ruling Peoples Party of the Bhutto family, indulge in this grotesque perversion though they try to keep it secret. There have also been reported instances of women being married to trees, which is only marginally less repulsive.
The political resistance has been episodic and the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) created in the eighties was vociferous but confined to educated, middle- and upper-middle-class women, who are relatively privileged. There are numerous examples of strong and powerful women, young and old, who battle against prejudice.
The feminist poet Fehmida Riaz turned the literary world upside down by her outraged defiance of the state. In her public statements and her writings she denounced the political and religious elites for justifying the subjugation of women. As a result she had to leave the country for a while. I once asked her to explain the anger. With a smile half-friendly and half-ironic, she replied, “I’m not, but many women are burdened with sour-faced husbands of foul disposition, permanently grouchy and jealous, suspicious, dull, lazy in the house, and violent at every possible opportunity. They see women as a necessary evil.”
The women in her poetry were not beautiful objects created for lusting males, but feisty and independent humans in their own right, with their own desires and needs, many of which were unrelated to men. Her poetry remains a testament to women’s anger as in “She Is a Woman Impure”:
She is a woman impure
Trapped in the cycle of blood
In the chain of years and months
Burning in the fire of lust
Seeking her pleasures
Mistress of the devil
Following his ways
Towards that elusive goal
Which has no route
That meeting of light and fire
Which is so hard to find.
Boiling blood inside her veins
Has torn her breasts,
The thorns on her way
Have severed her womb,
On her body’s shame
There is no shade of sanctity,
But, O gods who rule this earth,
You shall never see
This woman impure
With a prayer on her lips
As a supplicant at your door.
Another public, though less vociferous, critic is the artist Shahzia Sikander (some of whose work can be seen at the Whitney Museum in New York). Her grandfather was a strict Wahhabi, but she was lucky. He was unusual in believing that “women should be nurtured, be heard, and be financially independent.” Her family provided her with an education that allowed her to end up at the National College of Arts in Lahore where she blossomed under the care of intelligent teachers and is today one of a number of gifted artists being produced in the country. Her inspiration comes from the tradition of Mughal miniatures, which were often explicit in portraying lovers, but she subverts tradition through humor, as in her painting “What Is Under the Blouse? What Is Under the Dress?”
What of the honor killings where a woman can be bumped off at will by her male relatives or her in-laws? Some of the recent cases have been horrific, but even if we do
uble the reported incidents the figures would reach six hundred women killed each year. Horrific though this is, it pales when compared to the fact that every twenty minutes a young mother dies because the health facilities are primitive. According to health workers, between twenty-five and thirty thousand women lose their lives each year because Pakistan lacks a basic social infrastructure, a view confirmed by a special study carried out by the Harvard School of Public Health. It was confirmed a few weeks ago while I was in Lahore and was told by a health inspector that there is fungus on the walls in the only operating room of the government-owned Mayo Hospital. There is no running water either. A water carrier comes in when required and doles it out from an oilskin just as his forebears once did in medieval times.
How is one supposed to begin to put a stop to all this? Charity and NGOs are not the solution. Many in Pakistan feel used by the United States and offers of help on this front are perceived with suspicion. However, Bangladesh (once part of Pakistan) has demonstrated how gains can be made.
The female literacy rate in Bangladesh is over 49 percent, while male literacy is a few points lower at 47 percent. The reason is simple. For the past few decades, particular emphasis has been placed on female education, as part of population control policy, health improvement, and gender empowerment efforts. When women acquire literacy, they tend to have fewer children. Also, the family’s health improves when the mother is educated and a breadwinner. The mother is regarded as the most central figure in a family. Men often abandon the family or are more likely to breakdown in a crisis situation, but the mother is the one who holds the family together and is the primary nurturer. The birth rate is now down to 2.7 percent from 6.2 percent in the seventies according to the CIA World Factbook.
In other words, what is required is political will and social expenditure on a level that matches military spending to lay the foundations of a modern society whose citizens can enter this century. Of the $11 billion provided by the United States to Pakistan since September 2001, $8 billion was spent on armaments and $100 million supposedly went to education and even less on health. And that, incidentally, is the only way to reduce and possibly eliminate the influence of religious extremists, some of whose more crazed adherents are currently hard at work razing girls’ schools to the ground in the beautiful valley of Swat.
At a recent wedding in Lahore, where both bride and groom belonged to the super-rich, millions were expended on flying in European food from Dubai. The decorative theme was the Palace of Versailles during Marie Antoinette’s time. And this in a country where 60 percent of children who survive are born either moderately or severely stunted. The condition and treatment of women is but one outcome of the permanent social crisis that afflicts the country.
4
WHILE SOME INSIDE HIS OWN PARTY SEE ZARDARI AS A PETTY usurper, as long as he has the backing of the U.S. embassy his position is considered impregnable. The reason for U.S. support is hardly a secret. Washington needed an instrument, however crude, as a fallback against total reliance on the military. It’s their bad luck that the only person on offer was the discredited husband of a slain politician, but he will be used until it is time for him to be discarded. As I have argued throughout this book, it was always thus. The past, the present, the future is mortgaged to Washington. And when the latter is engaged, directly or indirectly, in the region, its demands become ever more unreasonable and are not amenable to the inquisition of truth. American foreign policy determines the domestic and external relations of Pakistan. The war in Afghanistan has now moved center stage. And so has Pakistan. There is a new U.S. administration. What will or should change? To recapitulate: Afghanistan has been almost continuously at war for thirty years, longer than both World Wars and the American war in Vietnam combined. Each occupation of the country has mimicked its predecessor. A tiny interval between wars saw the imposition of a malignant social order, the Taliban, with the help of the Pakistani military and the late Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister who approved the Taliban takeover in Kabul.
It is no secret that over the past two years, the U.S.-NATO occupation of that country has run into serious military problems. Given a severe global economic crisis and the election of a new American president—a man separated in style, intellect, and temperament from his predecessor—the possibility of a serious discussion about an exit strategy from the Afghan disaster hovers on the horizon. The predicament the United States and its allies find themselves in is not an inescapable one, but a change in policy, if it is to matter, cannot be of the cosmetic variety. I have been criticized for preaching to the damned and warned that it is to labor in vain, but what if it is? Anything that can help to bring war and occupation to an end and save human lives is worth the effort.
Washington’s hawks will argue that, while bad, the military situation is, in fact, still salvageable. This may be technically accurate, but it would require the carpet-bombing of southern Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, the destruction of scores of villages and small towns, the killing of untold numbers of Pashtuns, and the dispatch to the region of at least 200,000 more troops with all their attendant equipment and air and logistical support. The political consequences of such a course are so dire that even Dick Cheney, the closest thing to Dr. Strangelove that Washington has yet produced, was uncharacteristically cautious when it came to suggesting a military solution to the conflict.
It has, by now, become obvious to the Pentagon that Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his family cannot deliver what is required, and yet despite the bipartisan character of the Obama presidency, it is probably far too late to replace Karzai with the former UN ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. On his part, fighting for his political (and probably physical) existence, Karzai continues to protect his brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, accused of being involved in the country’s staggering drug trade, but has belatedly sacked Hamidullah Qadri, his transport minister, for corruption. Qadri was taking massive kickbacks from a company flying pilgrims to Mecca. Is nothing sacred? In her confirmation testimony to the U.S. Senate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that Afghanistan was a narco-state and made little effort to conceal who was responsible. Karzai’s days may be numbered.
Of course, axing one minister is like whistling in the wind, given the levels of corruption reported in Karzai’s government, which, in any case, controls little of the country. The Afghan president parries Washington’s thrusts by blaming the U.S. military for killing too many civilians from the air. The bombing of the village of Azizabad in Herat province in August 2008, which led to ninety-one civilian deaths (of which sixty were children), was only the most extreme of such recent acts. Karzai’s men, hurriedly dispatched to distribute sweets and supplies to the survivors, were stoned by angry villagers.
Given the thousands of Afghans killed in recent years, it is small wonder that support for the neo-Taliban is increasing, even in non-Pashtun areas of the country. Many Afghans hostile to the old Taliban still support the resistance simply to make it clear that they are against the helicopters and missile-armed unmanned aerial drones that destroy homes, and to “Big Daddy” who wipes out villages, and to the flames that devour children.
In February 2008, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell presented a bleak survey of the situation on the ground to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:
Afghan leaders must deal with the endemic corruption and pervasive poppy cultivation and drug trafficking. Ultimately, defeating the insurgency will depend heavily on the government’s ability to improve security, deliver services, and expand development for economic opportunity.
Although the international forces and the Afghan National Army continue to score tactical victories over the Taliban, the security situation has deteriorated in some areas in the south and Taliban forces have expanded their operations into previously peaceful areas of the west and around Kabul. The Taliban insurgency has expanded in scope despite operational disruption caused by the ISAF [NATO forces] and Ope
ration Enduring Freedom operations. The death or capture of three top Taliban leaders last year—their first high-level losses—does not yet appear to have significantly disrupted insurgent operations.
Since then the situation has only deteriorated further, leading to calls for sending in yet more American and NATO troops—and creating ever deeper divisions inside NATO itself. In recent months, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, wrote a French colleague (in a leaked memo) that the war was lost and more troops were not a solution, a view reiterated recently by Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the British defense chief, who came out in public against a one-for-one transfer of troops withdrawn from Iraq to Kabul. He put it this way:
I think we would all take some persuading that there would have to be a much larger British contingent there. . . . So we also have to get ourselves back into balance; it’s crucial that we reduce the operational tempo for our armed forces, so it cannot be, even if the situation demanded it, just a one-for-one transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan, we have to reduce that tempo.
The Spanish government is considering an Afghan withdrawal and there is serious dissent within the German and Norwegian foreign policy elites. The Canadian foreign minister has already announced that his country will not extend its Afghan commitment beyond 2011. And even if the debates in the Pentagon have not been aired in public, it’s becoming obvious that, in Washington, too, some see the war as unwinnable.
Enter former Iraq commander General David Petraeus, center stage as the new CENTCOM commander. Ever since the “success” of “the surge” he oversaw in Iraq (a process designed to create temporary stability in that ravaged land by buying off the opposition and, among other things, the selective use of death squads), Petraeus sounds, and behaves, more and more like Lazarus on returning from the dead—and before his body could be closely inspected.
