Rape and its punishment in Pakhtunkhwa.

Rape is a crime seen to signify a different degree of harm in different cultures. In most cultures it is a crime against women, this is what I subscribe too. In pushtun culture it is mostly a crime against a family's honor and similarly in Islam it is mostly against GOD (consenting sex labelled as zina). Thus the restitution in different cultures and Islam is different and aimed to provide restitution to the perceived victim.

One more thing before rape can be punished it has to be reported.

In pushtun culture if a girl was raped or even assumed to have been raped she was killed for honor (as I said the victim was and is considered to be the family, mainly male family members and not the women). This still goes on. In this atmosphere nobody comes out. So forget about providing justice, the victim rarely reports a case.

The recent experiment of the Pakistani government with Islamic law by passing the hudood and zina ordinance has created a nightmare for the poor victims of zina. If a women is raped and gets pregnant she has to come out. At this point if she states that so and so raped her she is asked, by Islamic law, to produce four adult males who witnessed the sexual act. This has never been possible. As this condition is not fulfilled the women is considered to have had sexual relations out of wedlock. Pakistani jails are full of such women who are incarcerated.

Now close to thirty years of experience in Pakistan with the Islamic law of hudood and zina has shown us that it is quite inadequate. Actually there has been an increase in domestic violence (well documented) after inception of these laws. But as it is considered divine there is no way out of it.

A law is a restriction on behavior. Laws in a group should serve a purpose, mainly that of restricting a particular behavior. So a law in our example of rape should deal with women suffering and exploitation not GOD.

When a women is raped it should be easy for her to report it with honor and dignity without fear of persecution. This right to be part of a law. And violators punishable by law.

Once reported a case is investigated and if reasonable data suggest that a culprit can be convicted beyond reasonable doubt (witnesses, collaborative evidence, DNA matching etc) then he or she be apprehended and brought to justice and punished in a reasonable humane way. A few years in jail or transfer of his property to the women or such will suffice.

In this system the law is dynamic, new methods of investigation when available are looked at (like DNA analysis) the only underlying essence of the law is to decrease the incidence of rape in a society and mitigate its trauma to its victim.

And if a case is weak due to lack of evidence and no evidence of lies on part of the victim she is allowed to live a life with the same dignity as before a rape occurred.

This brings us to another issue of the definition of rape. Rape is sex without informed consent. Zina is not synonymous with rape as consensual sex can be zina but not rape. Consensual sex is no body else's business. A concept very alien to a pushtoon when his sister is mentioned. But something absolutely necessary for creating a just, healthy and equitable society.

Our focus should be to decrease the exploitation of women. Forced marriages, marriages of minors, buying and selling of women, prostitution due to starvation, polygamy, and incarceration of women within walls and behind veils, domestic violence and lack of say in their own affairs are some of the things that we need to address as a nation. None of these can be addressed without a dynamic judicial system.

Why secularism is a threat to the religious minded Pashtoon

Some one asked me once, puzzled, as to why some religious Pashtoons considered Secularism a major threat to them and how they could not see that it would not only suit the less religious but they themselves could practice their individual peculiarities more freely by avoiding sectarian conflict with other faithful in such a state. I used to be puzzled by this myself. Then it started to make sense. They are actually not any different than you and I.

In the end it’s about activation of what is called the fear response. An automatic reaction in the brain that produces involuntary reaction we all call fear. The precipitating stimulus if happening at the moment is fear and when anticipated, in the future, is considered anxiety, both through the same mechanism.

Now fear and anxiety are powerful moderators of behavior. Since the day we are born we map the environment for this and soon find mechanisms to subdue these emotional responses.
This then becomes habits, if large number of people do it, it becomes a ritual (not all rituals are for this purpose some can be for pure joy). Each cultures unique environment generates its own patterns of fear and anxiety.

We start with our own mothers, those early pangs of anxiety melts in her arms, But a women herself traumatized with war and misfortune can only transmit her own fears and anxieties and the child see a perpetual tussle of its rise and subsequent dissipation through - dhamm, daroodh, dhwaa, thaweez, khatam and such. So when his own turn comes he has a well tested remedy in hand.

It would be all fine if this was all that happened. But things soon get out of control. People see that fear and anxiety is a major force in human condition and its mastery can bring power and prestige. Wheelers and dealers have manipulated both ends of the equation. Both generation of fear and anxiety and its subsequent relief are trillion dollar industries even today.
Why does a pashtoon go to a mullah, a murshad, bends towards kaaba, or in extreme cases blows himself up. Mostly to calm the pain and suffering of the fear response. The mullah created world view of fear and more fear, of a God , all powerful, all conquering but one that will skin you alive and roast you in molten lava if a is not equal to b, and b has to be equal to c, and d and f should not mix with e, and if x, y and z occur together than you have to slaughter l and m so on.

But then this lava has a potion that protects the skin from burning, from eternal pain, he will guide you and you will follow for you have a fully activated and outside controlled fear response, running rampart in your amygdyla. Your internal brain circuitry powerless to calm it down, for they were never allowed to develop, you must rely on these wheelers and dealers for your own calibration.
Now some fortunate can develop their forebrain functions that can calm anxiety and fear through internal mechanisms (well described and not so hard to do). To them this game is so backward. They live in a world where dangers are real and have real solutions, solutions and problems they can see, touch, feel, explore, quantify, analyze, not those based on random descriptions of random story tellers. They get afraid as well but then they search in areas in avenues they know will lead to solutions. Solutions that calm the same circuitry.

Then what is the difference. Well one leads to the pursuit of the imaginary (ookhrawi mameelath{dealing with akhirath}, fantasies like harry potter and other fairy tales including Bedouin fairy tales) the outcome a person having tremendous intellect and effort spend in an imaginary world. Only good if you subscribe to his imagination, of no good to others(thus the zeolot persistence on their way, e.g. mullah Omar).

The other one in pursuit of the obvious (dunyawi mameelath, science, non-fiction) even if he be of lesser intellect and if he works only one day in his life will leave something here, in this world for his fellow humans to feel, see and appreciate. Something far more than left after a lifetime in the pursuit of the imaginary.

Secularism makes sense if you are the second type, for wheelers and dealers in imaginary pursuits it is a game changer, a society tilt in the other direction, an unacceptable nuisance and a major hurdle.

Pashtoon - Lost and dazed

In my search for a topic I stumbled upon"Pashtoon Culture" by Raj Wali Shah Khattak at http://www.khyber.org/articles/2003/PashtoonCulture.shtml.

After a long description of grandeur pashtoon qualities Raj Wali comes to reality and laments the present state of utter confusion and dismay. He states:

However, all this is changing rapidly today. During the last half a century, the process of cultural change as well as destruction has been at work. This has resulted in weakening of cultural institutions. Hujra, Mosque and the home are undergoing change. One factor that contributes towards this instability is the lack of proper education of Pashtoon Culture. Very few systematic efforts have been made to understand Pashtoon traditions and its philosophical foundations. The old order is being replaced by disorder. Perhaps this is all because of external cultural onslaught. Of course we can face this cultural onslaught and change its direction.

If it was a matter of fighting with swords, I would have fought it out. However, in this fateful war of fate, which has come upon me, I am standing all lost and dazed. That is:

د تورو جنګ که وو ما به کوي وو

د نصيب جنګ چي دي وار خطا ولاړ يمه

Raj Wali's statement of being lost and dazed is a ubiquitous pashtoon sentiment these days. Gone are the days of feeling an aura of superiority about oneself. A certain self assurance that comes with knowing what to do. A sense of self worth that is not dependent on outward show of material attachments. Today the pasthoon is both materially poor and also devoid of his legendary sense of self worth and self assurance. The result is a prevalent decay of all pashtoon society and desperate attempts to remain relevant in a world that has become infinitely more complex in the meantime.

Raj Wali like others yearns for this sense of pakhtu and pakhtun but fails to show us its essence. Where and how did this strong sense of being originated within a group of people accustomed to both a harsh terrain and equally ferocious foes through out its history? Its an understanding that is mandatory to our survival as a culture, a people and a nation.

Having being privileged to have lived in the company of a few last remaining souls that exemplified this pashtoon ethos, through some unusual set of circumstances and then to have left pashtoon watan before its present annihilation and thus avoiding any painful recent interactions to see these memories all get destroyed, I consider myself uniquely placed to comment on what made these people great.

First the assumption that most pashtoon's exemplified such character is false. Even at the best of times only a few carried themselves this way. Outside their environment the characteristics became more apparent and a few others manifested such traits when compared to other local populations.

Rather than describing each individual person I will just present the underlying common thread that exemplified their true nature. They were both men and women who's strength of character was not only confined to themselves but obvious to others around them as well. The were all simple people. Simple in the sense that they worked with very few principles. A new situation did not demand a thorough analysis of pros and cons of ones actions. Situations were dealt with the same set of rules. Most if not all human interactions were guided by the same basic equation which after repeated expression was well recognized by all around them.

I will stress on this point to make it a little more clear. Earlier I was talking to a pashtoon civil servant in Northern Pakhtunkhwa. Consider his situation. He lives with his wife and children and his widowed mother. He works under someone and has many that work under him. He confessed that he has no skills to argue with his mother as she gets sad which is deeply disturbing to him. He has thus developed a relation with his mother that is one of total subordination. Given such a license the mother does what she pleases fit. This creates situations where he may have to justify his actions to others. Since his irrational support for his mother cannot be justified or explained he resorts to anger when confronted with such a situation. Thus his relation with his own wife is completely different than with his mother. Her will is not expressed and routinely subdued. To do this he usually keeps an angry demeanour about himself. She in turn takes it out on the kids or servants. At work he nods at anything his boss says and dishes it out to subordinates in the same manner in which he receives it.

With this mindset (of a present day pashtoon) a stranger is first judged. Thus one is assigned a master or a servant class tag and dealt with different sets of values. The situation is made more and more complex as new lies are added to the mix at times to keep peace with conflicting narratives that had been previously forwarded to advance a momentary stability. This complex set of values, at times conflicting and mostly fabricated consume more and more of ones time and energy to the point that one is totally consumed by just such activities.

The end result is that one is perpetually exploited and in turn exploits others. The society on a whole becomes a jungle where one excels by destruction of another, rather than a civic society where effort is synergized for a common good.

With the slow pace of global change, modernity did not influence the pashtoon land until the 1970s. The local population lived with the same social setup it had for centuries. With the rise of middle east and mass migration of pashtoons to Karachi and the gulf changed a lot of local social dynamics. The subsequent Russian invasion brought world attention and outside manipulators that acquired local collaborators. The social fabric started to change. Unknown drug dealers appeared with dubious connections, warlords with outside handlers, religious scholars with outside fund channels.

By the 1990s the local economy had entirely transformed to be dependent on outside connections. If you grow tobacco in swabi you have to have a 'chit' from the Pakistan tobacco board to sell your product. The mulla in your village has a million dollar mosque donated by a Kuwaiti sheik while the rest of the population has mud walls.

With this change came a change in the psyche of the people. Each family had one that dealt with the outsiders. Either you had a tableeqi brother or cousin who had tableegi friends, or you joined as a low rank in the army and did their dirty work. Places in bureaucracy were similarly acquired as collaborators and not in charge. To justify such anti-pushtoon activities these collaborators developed complex paradigms. The tableegis were full filling a higher religious duty, the war lords the same, the army officers are protecting against imaginary evil forces that threaten a pan Islamic dream, the drug dealers are only hurting the infidels and so on. By 1990s, living in such a chaotic and complex environment the pushtoon of old could no longer survive on his simplistic code of life that did not allow any economic gain or social stature.

Soon nobody could do anything without being either a collaborator or a direct sponsor of this mismanaged economy. At home you keep conflicting values by creating even more confining rules that brings all social activity to a halt.

The pashtoon of today is a confused, lost and dazed individual that has forgotten his core values and apart from a language bears no resemblance to those gone by. For them to regain any sense of former glory they must first shed the many layers of filth that they have accumulated over their skins. The simplistic older model of existence based on pashtoonwali and a pinch of religious piety is unfortunately no longer relevant in the 21st century. Modernity still is best lived with a single equation in a single mind, but a different equation than what our forefathers had. It is high time for the pushtoon to define this single equation that can be relied on in most situation in day to day existence.