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| Had dictator Zia heard Zari Sarfraz, perhaps our lives would have been different. |
Disclaimer The State has been stripping away women`s rights since the age of Zia. Do you agree or do you think women activists are westernised, elitist feminists who continue to follow the old agenda? APWA, WAF, women politicians and old timers may find the CEO of Google`s words suggestive “The best way to get out of this (rut?) is to invent a new product. That`s the way Google thinks. Incumbents very seldom invent the future.” Agree or disagree, that is your prerogative!
Had dictator Zia heard Zari Sarfraz, perhaps our lives would have been different. She raised red flags against the Taliban when first they surfaced some twenty years ago. She made life-changing recommendations for women to live as equal citizens with equal rights.
But her voice along with many other women activists, especially the WAF, was effectively smothered. Today the Taliban have arrived. Today the Pakistani woman is flogged, maimed, murdered, locked and executed publically. Zia`s dream of orthodox Islam and chaddar aur chardiwari has thus come a full circle.
Wither crusaders like Zari Sarfraz; Women Action Forum feminists; Dr Attiya Inayatullah`s Family Planning; Begum Liaquat`s All Pakistan Women`s Association (APWA) and PPP leader Sherry Rehman?
At an APWA conference last March, I request Begum Zari Sarfraz for an interview. She`s unhappy how her words are “twisted” by the media. Besides, she says, there`s nothing new to add to the recycled statements our leaders make. The interview never materialises. A month later she dies suddenly. What would your sister say about the Taliban, were she alive today? I ask Aziz Sarfraz who is my surrogate interviewee for his sister. “She warned about the Taliban way back when Zia sent them to rid Afghanistan of the Soviets. `That done they`ll turn their guns on Pakistan,` she said. `These militants have tasted power, now they will want control of the two Pushto speaking tribal provinces - NWFP and Balochistan.`”
Zari Sarfraz, a politician, businesswoman and a social worker from Mardan made this prophetic statement - not once but many times over to the people ruling Pakistan. “This is not a joke,” she`d say sternly. As chairperson of Status of Women Commission, she and her band of progressives scoured Pakistan for two years interviewing women treated like second-class citizens. Zia put their recommendations in cold storage. It was evil of him. He played the devil`s advocate when on the one hand he nominated Zari Sarfraz to head the delegation to the UN Conference on Women at Nairobi in July 1985, and on the other, pulled the rug from under her feet by passing the Hudood Ordinance on the eve of the Conference. She was livid. “I am not a rubber stamp,” said Zari when I interviewed her in Islamabad just before her departure for Nairobi. She promised to take our fight to the UN forum. She did. As a reporter for Dawn, I covered the Conference. We returned with the unanimously adopted Forward Looking Strategies (232 paragraphs) whose worth for Zia was the presidential dustbin.
Undeterred, unshaken and unflappable, the Pushtun woman carried on her crusade for women`s rights. During Zia`s reign of bigotry, Islamic extremism and cruelty to women, “my sister would come on TV debates to challenge the Hudood Ordinance, silencing her worst critics,” says Aziz. As the head of their household, despite being denied a formal education, Zari Sarfraz took charge of family business after the death of their father Khan Bahadur Sarfaraz Khan in 1941. “What we have today, we owe everything to her. She would handle the family finances and give my brother Mir Afzal Khan, me, Laila my wife, and the children, our share every month. She was like a mother to us.” At age 20, Zari Sarfraz negotiated to buy the Premier Sugar Mills in Mardan, which she built into one of the largest enterprises in Asia. Having secured the financial future of her family, she turned to politics and was spotted by Lady Abdullah Haroon, who took the young girl under her wings.
“Lady Haroon, whom the Quaid had appointed as head of women`s affairs became Zaro`s mentor,” says Aziz who affectionately calls his sister `Zaro`. Younger to her by ten years, Aziz Sarfraz, 76, says “Tomorrow it will be one year since my sister passed away.” Do you miss her? I ask. He hands me a poem that I read out aloud
You can shed tears that she is gone or you can smile because she has lived/ You can close your eyes and pray that she`ll come back or you can open your eyes and see all she`s left/Your heart can be empty because you can`t see her or you can be full of the love you shared/ You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday/ You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back or you can do what she`d want smile, open your eyes, love and go on.
His elder brother Mir Afzal Khan was once a dear friend of Zulfi Bhutto until the latter tried grabbing his business empire to give it away to one of his ministers. Nawaz Sharif appointed Afzal as his chief minister in NWFP. After a falling out with Nawaz, he joined the ANP, much to the chagrin of his elder sister Zari. In 1996, the Sarfrazs were devastated with the deaths of Afzal Khan and their lovely daughter Zahra who lost her life to cancer. Laila Sarfraz threw herself into social work and the good of humanity. “I tell Laila it`s not for Zahra but because of Zahra that she changed from being a housewife to a woman activist,” Aziz says.
Today Laila Sarfraz is the president of APWA. Once branded an elitist social networking club of privileged and aging begums, Laila works hard to change APWA`s image especially in today`s jingoistic environment. Journalist Mazhar Abbas has a valid question in the letters section of this newspaper. “Should the Taliban be solely held responsible for disgracing women or should we blame society at large? What about the women who have been disgraced at the hands of the feudals of Sindh, Chaudhries of Punjab, Sardars of Balochistan, Khans of the Frontier... Have we forgotten the incident of the `naked parade` of a woman by the Chaudhries of Nawabpur in the 80s? We could not have even aired the video of that incident... How can we forget what happened to a Pashtun girl in Karachi and how the couple left the country? Was the culprit who was responsible for burying five women alive ever punished? Have the government and Parliament taken any action or even condemned the senator in the parliament? Also, a federal minister, enjoying a high profile position, was allegedly responsible for disgracing a minor girl, though he denied it. The incident should remind the highly acclaimed journalists of a sitting ambassador who today claims to be very liberal and against the Taliban, but introduced the same kind of law at the Karachi University in the 80s. A high -profile woman was disgraced when hundreds of her pictures with the former US president were dropped from an aircraft. From public flogging to naked parades taking place, from selling minor girls to settling disputes, getting women married to the Holy Quran or burning them in domestic violence women in our society still struggle to get respect.”
Journalist turned politician Sherry Rehman, isolated and left out in the cold by her party, tells me that “many ANP women have texted her to thank for speaking for them, because they are afraid and unable. We need to help them without making it an elite niche issue. In my view, Nizam-i Adl is not ideal. Non-state actors can be in a dialogue with the government for peace, but they cannot be the government. I am moving an adjournment on the advance of the Taliban and how we can empower a province to combat this menace. They need the sec urity forces to support them, not unelected mullahs.”
