July 27, 2006

Isolated incidents abound of women being brutalised in the name of honour, or humiliated and punished when seen as agents of change in a society with a tribal, feudal mindset. Of late, there have been Mukhtaran Mai (Meerwala Jatoi), Dr Shazia Khalid (Sui Gas Fields), Sonia Naz (Faisalabad) and Syeda Jan and Umme Salma (Orakzai Agency), not to forget the beating and dragging of educated, professional women in the street by the Lahore police, who dared to run in a marathon.

But for every Mukhtaran (victim of gang rape under jirga justice based on tribal honour), Dr Shazia (victim of revenge rape, allegedly at the hands of an urban, ‘educated’, man), Sonia Naz (victim of police brutality and alleged rape) and the two craftswomen in Orakzai Agency (victims of sectarian hatred, and for being seen as challengers of tribal values), there are hundreds upon hundreds whose ordeal goes unreported.

That said, it is obviously unfair to single out the tribal belt for censure when it comes to lawlessness in society. The problem is all pervasive at every tier of the sociopolitical order. We live in a country where the basic law is violated every few years and the powerful junta sends elected governments packing, without due process.

Elected leaders, in turn, are known to have used force to throw their political opponents out of parliament and implicate them in false cases of treason and corruption; they have not even shied from attacking the Supreme Court or forcing the judges to get a judgment against political rivals.

Intelligence and security agencies routinely pick up individuals in violation of the law; many go missing for life. Others are forced into exile, those in favour are advised to stay there, and some choose exile to avoid persecution by a regime bent on politically annihilating them. The courts are helpless even when appealed to for justice.

Such acts of lawlessness abound in countries where state systems are either inept or the state itself indulges in violation of law. Pakistan’s case presents a blend of both. Our cities are no longer safe from the scourge of lawlessness, because those responsible for maintaining law and order act at the whims of the politicians who have placed them there, many undeservedly.

The rulers themselves have largely remained unrepresentative of the people. Even when elected to the office through fair means, they either act in a dictatorial manner or become corrupt and self-seeking.

In the rural hinterland, the problem is compounded, where political affiliations with the given parties are guided by clan rivalries and old family feuds. Battle lines are kept drawn at all times, and no opportunity to inflict an insult on the rival is missed. An overblown sense of personal and the clan’s honour is a preoccupation; while your own honour must be protected at all costs, sullying that of the rivals’ becomes a goal that must be pursued with a vengeance, for your own honour largely depends on violating the others’.

If it is a gung-ho violation of the law of the land at the state level by those wielding political and executive power gained through unfair means, it is the parallel justice system suiting the exigencies of those who matter in a given rural, tribal set-up that is a bane. Call them a jirga, a panchayat or a dictatorial rule, the end result is the same: the most vulnerable sections of society, women, the minorities and political opponents, in that order, are the real victims.

General Ziaul Haq gave us the Hudood Ordinances, the Law of Evidence, the separate electorate for the minorities, separate text books for Shia and Sunni students, etc. His immediate successor Ghulam Ishaq Khan added to the damage done to society by enacting the Qisas and Diyat laws. Then came the Shariat bills and the suggestion of declaring an elected prime minister the Amirul Momineen. Islamisation, too, became a political ploy in the hands of the civil-military establishment to put and keep in power an individual as long as he or she did its bidding.

The obscurantist process, with an overdose of outward religiosity, was undertaken without being guided by a wider cross section of scholars, social scientists, intellectuals and think tanks; it continues in the form of so-called religious programmes beamed into our homes via the electronic media that either reinforces the religious dogma of the puritan variety or simply, superstition. The practice has resulted not only in making religion controversial but also in the victimisation of the vulnerable sections of society, besides fanning sectarianism and the related acts of terrorism.

At the global level, Pakistan has come to be dubbed as a safe haven for terrorists, a free-for-all training ground for jihad preachers, who have indoctrinated hundreds of young men to go out on a holy mission and kill the perceived enemies of Islam, including those belonging to rival sects, and even the ruling president and the prime minister. This, while many of the said preachers walk free. They even take part in elections, ironically helped by a section of the ruling establishment, which has helped in filling the legislatures with more fanatics than ever before. Meanwhile, sectarian murders and hate crimes against minorities and women continue unabated.

What happened to the two innocent women in the line of duty and to two children in the distant tribal area of Orakzai Agency near Kohat, and what keeps happening elsewhere in the name of honour or sectarian killings, with or without tribal justice being a factor behind such acts of lawlessness, is part of the bigger problem. The state and the myriad of its ad-hoc mechanisms based on the exigencies of those at the helm at a given point in time, lack legitimacy at home and with the world at large.

Unless the state systems and its governance mechanisms acquire legitimacy, the courts are freed of political arm-twisting, elections are rid of manipulation by the junta, and the Constitution is made inviolable, Pakistan will continue to be blamed by India for bombings in Mumbai and Delhi, for proliferation of nuclear weapons, for the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan, and our strongest ally in the ‘global war on terror’, the US, will continue to believe all such allegations.

Back home, our women and minorities will keep suffering under the oppression imposed on them by bad governance –– an acceptable euphemism for ‘failed state’. Our image problem is not only a figment of the imagination of our foreign detractors; it is a problem whose brunt is borne by the people living in this country on a daily basis.

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