Maryam Bibi of the NGO Khwendo Kor or “Sister’s home” has been working for women’s education, economic empowerment, civil rights and health in KP for over 20 years. Her views on community development:

“We have now been working for 13 years in Fata. I felt our coping strategies and the difficulties we experienced, that we were suffering in isolation — today I can share my experience of working in fragile and complex areas. We work from the perspective of women’s empowerment and in these areas women can’t express themselves so freely (in a jirga or a mosque) so their voices are not taken into account. To bring them to the decision-making level, we feel that community organisation is the best approach. Being a small women’s organisation we are more vulnerable while SRSP has more leverage being a much bigger organisation. However, we agree with the SRSP that trust is central.

You need to have trust and close coordination with the community. Since we work in Taliban area, we insisted that our women staff should wear shuttlecock burqas. Some of them protested but eventually agreed to wear them. We have to create space, if negotiated properly. … In our work, there has to be learning and reflection and honest soul searching. Mistakes can never be covered up. We realised early on that we needed men as social organisers and so we hired them and from the beginning we had parallel women’s and men’s organisations.

Networking and coordination is also important and we coordinate with line departments and agencies to deliver. Interpersonal relationships with the military are also needed; 11th Corps is a big stakeholder in the area. We always use local transport and never use the organisation’s vehicle when we travel to the field. We change our timings a lot for security purposes. Building on indigenous knowledge is also important. We are today well versed in Hadith and Quranic ayats. We are very clear about the rights that Islam has given to women. It is very important to have the correct quotes from the Holy Quran and the Hadith since in Fata everything is seen from the perspective of religion. Why can’t we use our religious traditions in favour of women? Believe me it is working! We started with one school and now there are 269 schools in the tribal areas for girls. We work despite the threats by the Taliban. We want peace on our land. The journey is long and hard but we are taking the first steps.”