Shaista Almani case: the root causes

The case of Shaista Almani and Balkhsher Mahar has highlighted a social custom which has become a scourge in the society of Sindh, irrespective of the caste and creed. Almost every day reports appear about women and men killed in the name of Karo-kari.

In the case of Shaista Almani, she is lucky to have survived so far, but her life remains under constant threat. Many have tried to make political capital out of the case of the agonized woman. But this is not just one case about which society should be concerned about: the problem goes far beyond and deeper.

Authorities at every level have sought to enact a law to curb Karo-kari, bring an end to jirga system and punish those guilty of practising unacceptable tribal customs. But the ground realities remain unchanged.

The practice of Karo-kari exists in various other forms and societies as well, but awareness has brought reform and progress. In Pakistan, especially in Sindh, we are passing through a strange transition: On the one hand education has increased, but, on the other, feudalism and tribalism are asserting their influence with greater force.

This cannot be attributed to one factor. The most important is the economic factor. Sindh's economy is based on land ownership. Huge tracts of land in a few hands have had the effect of giving vast powers to the landowners. They wield enormous influence over the rights and lives of rural people comprising more than 70 per cent of the province's population.

These people have created their own fiefdoms and without any regard for law, impose their own decisions, whether it be with regard to matrimonial disputes or political rivalries. The perception of basic human rights does not exist. The word of the tribal or feudal chief is the law. Injustices are therefore inherent in the situation. Almost every kind of unlawful act and its reaction emanate from this.

Another factor concerns the police. This force has to ensure peace and justice, but incidentally it has become a tool of the feudals and tribal chiefs who enforce their will through the police. Every second bandit has been created by the police by oppressing the innocent people who later take up arms and to avenge injustices upon them and turn to banditry and a life of crime.

Rural poverty adds to the causes of Karo-kari. There are instances in which people in need have killed their own wives and sisters and a man from the other family and then got some money, land or woman as compensation, again with the connivance of a landlord or sardar.

Another important factor is the legal system. The prevalent laws which we inherited from the colonial rulers, have many aspects favouring the criminal. The law makes an allowance for murder committed in an emotional state of mind, and there can be no quarrel with it. But that provision has been continuously misused in a way that predetermined murder too is treated as a crime of passion. The result is that even if the accused has committed a pre-planned murder, he gets away with minor punishment.

After the Shaista episode, political leaders have demanded a suitable law ban Karo-kari, but experts in jurisprudence have expressed their reservations, because the law cannot be effective unless it is honestly implemented and cases are thoroughly investigated.

In a society where the word of tribal chief, feudal lord and moneyed man is the real law, the addition of another bit of legislation would be nothing but a piece of paper. Sir Charles Napier, the first English governor-general (1843), used harsh punishments for Karo-kari, but the practice did not end; it only took the shape of "suicides", as is happening in India in dowry cases.

We must not forget that even if every Shaista Almani is given protection by armed police, Karo-kari will not be eliminated until the economic system is re-arranged, a rigorous exercise is undertaken to make the police an honest institution, and lacunae in the jurisprudence are removed to ensure justice for the aggrieved.

Bush's backyard blues

A variety of reasons have been advanced for the United States' decision to convene an extraordinary summit of the Americas, which concluded last week in the Mexican city of Monterrey on a note that couldn't have thrilled Washington. Following a gathering in Quebec in 2001, the next summit was scheduled for Buenos Aires in 2005. But the White House decided it wasn't going to wait that long.

One obvious explanation in an election year is the need to distract attention from the catastrophe in Iraq, where Shia clerics are finding it necessary to point out to the occupation forces that even a nominally democratic dispensation would require elections rather than the planned pick-and-choose strategy.

Besides, a large number of US citizens are immigrants from adjoining nations, and it was important for George W. Bush to demonstrate that he is on speaking terms with his neighbours. In the event, he did succeed in mending fences with Mexico and Canada, both of which opposed the aggression against Iraq.

Canada's new prime minister, Paul Martin, has correctly been identified by the State Department as a politician far likelier to kowtow to Washington than his independent-minded predecessor, Jean Chretein. And Mexico's Vicente Fox, who faithfully served Coca-Cola for many years in an executive capacity before jumping into politics, wasn't comfortable anyhow with the idea of defying the northern superpower, yet felt obliged to reflect the popular will on the war.

In the circumstances, it is interesting that both leaders had to be bribed to fall in line. Martin was won over with a slice of the most mouth-watering cake on the current American menu: Iraqi contracts. Fox was fobbed off with recently announced concessions for Mexican migrant workers, large numbers of whom try to cross into the US illegally for purely economic reasons. As Fidel Castro likes to point out, the rate of fatalities on the US-Mexican border - about 500 a year - has been considerably higher than that of deaths at the Berlin Wall.

Castro wasn't invited to Monterrey, of course. He is the perennial ghost at the summits of the Americas. His government's record in terms of human rights and democracy is too bleak, it is said, for him to be treated as anything other than a pariah.

Never mind the fact that over the years the US has nurtured, sponsored and sustained Latin American regimes with incomparably worse records than that of Cuba. Never mind that, were he still in power, Augusto Pinochet would almost certainly have been serenaded by the US at any regional summit.

Predictably, Bush used his speech at the opening of the Monterrey summit to castigate Castro's regime - but his remarks failed to find an echo in the chamber. Not all that long ago, most Latin American leaders would risen to the bait without a second thought.

The democratization of the continent has progressively tilted the scales against those inclined to humour Uncle Sam's tendency to treat not just Central and South America as a backyard. Even Fox, by no means a radical, found it necessary to proclaim that he wouldn't be a "lackey of Bush" (although he eagerly accepted an invitation to the US president's Texan ranch).

The US is clearly worried by the trend whereby a growing number of elected Latin American governments look up to Havana with a degree of awe, while their gaze towards Washington is laden with contempt rather than fear.

In its newest manifestation, this trend was launched a few years ago by Hugo Chavez, the president of oil-rich Venezuela. Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, the former labour leader inaugurated as the president of South America's largest country, Brazil, at the beginning of last year, is less uncompromising but nonetheless feisty in defence of his nation's sovereignty. After the US introduced regulations whereby all incoming foreigners are obliged to let themselves be fingerprinted and photographed, Brazil cheekily followed suit with respect to American visitors.

Uncle Sam does not enjoy being treated as an equal, and Lula's reciprocal rules are bound to have won the approval of his comrade Castro. They ought anyhow to be emulated by other nations. The US may indeed have legitimate security concerns, but so do other countries - and in many cases, particularly but by no means exclusively in Latin America, troublemakers tend to originate from the US.

President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, who blames his debt-ridden country's economic collapse two years ago on IMF prescriptions, constitutes another area of concern for the US. After foreign minister Rafael Bielsa visited Havana recently, he was roundly berated by US assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega (no relation of Manuel, but of Cuban origin, like a surprising number of ideologues in the Bush administration) for failing to hobnob with anti-Castro dissidents - most of whom, naturally, are US-sponsored.

This is precisely the sort of gringo arrogance that alienates Latin Americans, and in many countries US intervention in politics has tended to backfire: where the US vocally takes exception to any candidates, there is often a surge in their support.

In Bolivia, president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado, who had spent so long in the US that he spoke Spanish with an American accent, and who was considered responsible for free-market reforms that devastated the national economy, was forced to resign last October following a series of popular protests.

The country where, back in 1967, Che Guevara was murdered under CIA supervision after failing to incite a rebellion, now has a left-wing government that fears US-instigated subversion. Washington, meanwhile, has accused Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba of encouraging the anti-Sanchez movement.

When the voters of Ecuador chose a reputedly left-wing former colonel, Lucio Gutierrez, over billionaire Alvaro Noboa (whose victory would have added a new dimension to the concept of a banana republic, given that his riches are based on plantations of that particular fruit), they did so despite charges that he was a clandestine communist.

Following his triumph in November 2002, Gutierrez, much like Lula, who had been elected just weeks earlier, reassured Ecuador's creditors that he would seek to pursue a reformist agenda without taking measures that might alienate the US or the IMF.

Since then, both Lula and Gutierrez have had a few lessons in the striking incompatibilities between IMF/US demands and the national interest. In Monterrey, Lula was among those most resistant to Bush's insistence on ramming through an agreement on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by the beginning of next year. As an extension of Nafta, the FTAA would create a market of 800 million people, and is being touted by Washington as the ideal response to the region's poverty.

The prospective recipients of this cure-all are much less complacent, given that the proportion of Latin Americans living in poverty has grown to 44 per cent in recent years, largely as a consequence of so-called free-market reforms. The FTAA would, above all, be a licence for US corporate giants to make a killing.

It wouldn't entail tangible reciprocal benefits for Latin American farmers: even nations otherwise well-disposed towards Washington bristled at Monterrey over Bush's reluctance to budge on the question of agricultural subsidies that protect farmers in the US against Third World competition.

One of the biggest problems most Latin American nations share is debt repayments - and if there is one voice that has consistently been raised against the debilitating burden of Third World debt for at least three decades, it is that of Castro. That is among the reasons why Bush wouldn't stand a chance against Fidel in any continent-wide popularity contest.

To the consternation of the Bush aides, the charismatic Cuban leader also exercises a hold on the imagination of a substantial section of the American intelligentsia - not the least because he doggedly fails to fit the brutal-dictator mould in which successive US administrations have sought to cast him. In what may have been a deliberate provocation, just last year he was serenaded on the screen by one of Hollywood's best known directors, Oliver Stone.

It isn't surprising that democratically elected Latin American leaders are increasingly inclined to venerate Castro - among other things, for his ability to survive for 45 years in the face of a perverse American embargo and unrelenting efforts at subversion that have included terrorism.

Cuba has lately taken to comparing the inhumane incarceration facilities at Guantanamo Bay with Auschwitz, and in his Revolution Day oration earlier this month, in an obvious gibe at the so-called leader of the free world, Castro lamented the fact that "those who wield such great power do not have psychiatrists to look after them".

Will the Iraq experience dissuade the US from trying to neutralize the growing band of rebels in its "backyard" through methods it used widely from the 1950s through to the 1980s? Venezuela's Chavez has good reason to suspect otherwise: he was almost unseated by a military-industrial coup two years ago. Small wonder, then, that he was particularly uncompromising at Monterrey. Passing a bunch of journalists waiting for the conclusion of talks between IMF representatives and Argentina's Kirchner, he reportedly quipped: "Have you seen the photos they've been sending from Mars? It looks like the IMF has been there too."

e-mail: mahirali2@netscape.net

Wheat flour shortage

Despite measures taken by the Punjab government, the flour price in the market is going up with every passing day and stockists are minting money by creating a shortage. Millowners are also exploiting the situation and extracting a maximum profit from the self-created wheat crisis.

The food department has reportedly failed to provide the required flour to about six million people of the district. However, the agencies concerned are indulging in jugglery of statistics and befooling not only their high-ups, but also the public representatives and the people. Officials received a number of complaints and reports about the shortage from different parts of the district, including rural areas.

Food department functionaries admit that they are bound to supply 124kg of wheat to each person per annum, which means the district needs over 744,000 tonnes of wheat annually and about 2,038 tonnes of wheat daily on the basis of population. But the fact of the matter is that currently the food department is supplying 1,268 tonnes of wheat to 33 functional mills of the district, which is 770 tonnes less than their quota.

Apart from this, the flour crisis is said to have aggravated due to variety of reasons. Firstly, it was the mills mafia which perceived well in time that the government was contemplating enhancing the support price of wheat. In this backdrop, this mafia in a calculated move, took advantage of the financial weakness of wheat growers and immediately jumped in to make purchase and manoeuvre contracts with the growers by making some advance payments.

According to an information, almost all millowners throughout the district had purchased huge stocks of wheat immediately after harvesting of the last crop. These stocks were not brought to the market by the millowners. Rather, they put pressure through their associations and members of the national and provincial assemblies to force the food functionaries to supply them wheat according to their capacity.

Not only this, the millers procured huge orders from Afghanistan and the tribal areas. Owing to the reduced quantity of flour available in the open market, the prices of the commodity have been shooting up every day. This trend intensified due to the abrupt enhancement in the support price of wheat, from Rs300 to Rs340.

Out of 38 flour mills of the district, 33 are mainly operating not for fulfilment of the requirement of the people, but for their buyers in Afghanistan and the tribal areas. Most of the mills belong to members of the national and provincial assemblies of the ruling party and a tehsil Nazim. Hundreds of tonnes of wheat is being smuggled to the tribal areas and some parts of Afghanistan. Flour shortage had been created by the millowners, stockists and the food officials in a calculated move to increase the rate of an essential commodity in the open market.

At present, both the urban and rural population of the district is facing shortage of flour due to short supply of wheat to the mills by the food department. Similarly, a number of local mills have huge stocks of wheat in their godowns, but instead of bringing such stocks to the market, the millowners reportedly bring only as much flour to the market as the amount of wheat supplied by the food department, claiming that whatever they are getting from the government godowns is being brought to the market.

Flour of five different qualities is reportedly being supplied in the market by the mills. But the same is being sold at higher rates than the price fixed by the government. A 20kg flour bag is being sold for Rs220 to Rs225 against the fixed rate of Rs190. Similarly, the loose flour is available at Rs14 per kg.

Deputy director food Rana Mohammad Saeed told Dawn that there was no shortage of flour in the district, adding extra wheat was being provided to the mills to meet the requirements of the inhabitants. As many as 1,268 tonnes of wheat was being supplied to the mills daily over and above the demand of the people.

He said during the previous month, the wheat supply to the mills had been 1,522 tonnes daily. But due to the sale of wheat in the open market by the millowners, the food department had reduced it to 1,268 tonnes from Jan 1. Another 1.59 tonnes of wheat was being supplied to 51 'chakkies' of the district to cater to the needs of the people, he said.

Meanwhile, on the direction of the chief minister, provincial Communication minister Chaudhry Zaheeruddin Khan held a meeting with the functionaries concerned to chalk out a strategy to ensure the supply of flour in the district to the satisfaction of the public. He claimed the government had launched the chief minister's 'Less Price Atta Programme' under which the poor people would be provided with 20kg flour bags at concessional rates. Over 56,285 bags would be supplied in the district through union councils, he said.

He claimed for the implementation of subsidized flour scheme, the flour bags would be equally distributed among all 289 union councils of the district without any discrimination. For this purpose, 100 deserving families would be identified in each and every union council, and two bags would be provided to them every month at the rate of Rs170 per bag through special coupons issued by the district government.

But the fact remains that such measures of the government are insufficient to be of any material impact. The public at large cannot be satisfied by such measures which cannot provide any relief to the people. Flour is the main diet of the people, and the prices of chapatis and nans, bread and other bakery items have gone up by 20 to 40 per cent.

The overwhelming population of the district belongs to the working class most of whom are daily-wagers. Those working in industrial and commercial centres, banks, government and semi-government departments are already facing an uphill task in making ends meet. The prices of daily use items are also showing an upward trend.

Neither the government nor the private sector has bothered to come to the rescue of the victims of high prices of flour and other essential items. This indifferent attitude of the agencies concerned has aggravated the people's miseries.

Traders have pressure groups for the protection of their rights. They launch campaigns against the government and the taxation agencies, but the consumers - the real victims of stockists, millowners and traders - have not realized how to protect their rights.

Karo-kari: what writers can do

The seminar on Karo-Kari held on Saturday last (Jan 17) proved quite informative for the audience which mostly comprised urbanites too familiar with the history and culture of Sindh.

The topic was: Karo-kari ka Khatma-Ahle Qalam ki Zimmedarian. (Eradication of Karo-kari and the responsibilities of the writers). Ten speakers were expected to address the seminar. Only five turned up. With a couple of exceptions, the speeches were rather repetitive.

Among those expected to speak were Dr Fehmeeda Hussain of the Shah Abdul Latif chair at the University of Karachi and Justice (retd) Majeda Rizvi, both known for their active roles in promoting women's rights. But they did not arrive.

The seminar was held on the advice of Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad who asked writers who met him recently to use their creative talent to promote a wider understanding of social problems, Karo-kari being one of them. The organizers of the seminar had chalked out an ambitious plan for the occasion, but they forgot about the busy schedules of the VIPs asked to preside over or attend literary functions.

In this case, the chief guest, who was said to be on his way to the venue of the seminar, kept people waiting for long and, in the end, did not turn up at all. The president was held up in Islamabad where he had gone on some important business. He directed a provincial minister to attend the occasion on his behalf. The minister too was on his way to the venue, but somehow could not make it.

Novelist and historian Ghulam Nabi Moghal made an exhaustive speech on the subject, quoting briefly the last lines of his own novel. Tracing the roots of the evil of Karo-kari, he referred to the social ways of the ancient Arabs who would bury the girl child alive, and also to the dark ages of Europe when women were burnt alive. He said Karo-kari was but one of a hundred ways in which women had been subjected to brutality in every phase of history and in all places.

Mr Moghal supported the common belief that all the miseries the "unhappy valley" of Sindh is afflicted with came from outside. Karo-kari, he said, originated among the Baloch tribes who, with the passage of time, settled in different areas of Sindh. The practice, he said, was most common, in those districts where the Baloch population was in a majority.

Mr Moghal also said that Karo-kari was deeply rooted in the feudal system. He recalled the occupation of Sindh by the British in Feb 1843 by Sir Charles Napier. Sir Charles directed all the feudals to assemble at Hyderabad Fort to express allegiance and loyalty to him, and in return for their obeisance receive full authority to rule over the people.

Women, the weakest element in the population, were thus bought and sold like cattle, maltreated, brutalized and killed on the slightest pretext. "The British have gone, but the feudals in Sindh have continued to lord it over the people as before".

Noor Mohammad Shaikh, an Urdu language professor and Sindhi-speaking person, in his brief paper called for an end to the feudal system and for allotment of 25 acres of land to each landless farmer, jobs to the jobless youth through economic reforms, more roads, adequate supply of potable water to the villages, and a secular education teaching people to respect others, particularly women and children. "The writers should learn the language and know the history and culture of the areas where the malaise of Karo-kari persists. Only then will they be able to uproot the evil," a Sindhi-speaking friend told me emphatically,

With the end of the year 2003, Urdu short story has completed its hundred years. The first story, according to a detailed account of Dr Mirza Hamid Beg, came from Allama Rashedul Khairi. This story, titled "Naseer and Khadija", was published in "Makhzan", Lahore, in December 1903.

Dr Beg refutes all the earlier claims about being the first on behalf of Sajjad Haider Yaldram and Prem Chand. What is important to Dr Beg is the craft and technique of the story.

"Otherwise, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan should be taken as the first story writer by virtue of his Guzra Hua Zamana (The bygone era), the title of a piece whose prose is simple and illustrative, describing the musings of an old man.

"But the end of the piece was not story-like, published in March 1873 it did not qualify as a short story." Urdu short story, during the half century since the rise of 'naya adab' or progressive writings, underwent tremendous changes in technique.

It used to be plain illustrative during the first half of the last century, romantic in theme, with a social and political touch in Prem Chand's stories. Then came modernism in the decade of the 60s when abstraction prevailed. Wrapped in abstraction, the story lost its original appeal. The modernists soon realized it and, as they say, the 'story was retrieved'.

Some friends at the office of a literary magazine, 'Mukaalma', gave their views on hundred years of Urdu short story. Let us see how the writers celebrate the century.

Nigar Sahbai, a poet known for geets - and he wrote nothing else - died at 76 last week. He wrote in real 'geet' diction, with popular Hindi vocabulary and did not 'Persian-iz' it.

Author of three anthologies of geet- Jeevan Darpan, Daman Sagar and Vnt Sey Aagay, he remained unsung. A geet devotee, this writer once spent some time in his company. He sang his geets in his own composition in a sonorous voice well suited to a song.