Nikkah (namas) for sale: For ration, IDPs fake marriage certificates to prove family status

Before a ration card can be given, a displaced person has to prove they are married.

DI KHAN:

Setting a dangerous precedent, internally displaced people, desperate to show proof of a family for the sake of a ration card, are paying for fake nikah namas. Many of these marriage documents do not even carry the signature or thumb print of the women they purport to represent.

Bannu has received the bulk of North Waziristan Agency’s (NWA) internally displaced persons (IDP). These IDPs need their CNICs to reflect their marital status to prove they have a family to support. This is needed to procure the ration card distributed to IDPs. With the new CNICs, a nikah nama is needed to prove a person is married.

Paper marriages

Traditionally, it is not common for tribal people from Waziristan to have a nikah nama—just the oral ceremony suffices and is preferred. Only those who need to show their marital status for the purposes of work outside the country or in government offices have previously gotten the paperwork done. The Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) also does not have any section dealing with marriage.

When the IDPs reached Bannu and realised their dilemma, they would spend up to Rs5,000 in getting a counterfeit one made. As is the case with ‘open markets’, once the market saw the spike in demand, it stepped in to supply. Nikah agents mushroomed, driving down the cost of a fake marriage certificate to Rs200.

The paper itself might not be fake, but the document is drawn up mostly without the presence of the women who the tribal men say they are married to and paid people or friends act as witnesses, in front of a religious cleric who is essentially party to the falsification.

For food on the table

Habibullah, 45, from Spinwam, NWA, has a CNIC which states he is single. “I got married a long time ago,” he said.

“Now I have two wives with 12 children but because of what my ID card says, I cannot get a ration card, so I will go get a nikah nama made, then the CNIC and then get the card,” the worried provider told The Express Tribune.

“I never felt the need to have a document solemnise my marriage; since centuries we have gotten married according to our riwaj but now I am being forced to get a nikah nama,” said Habibullah. Without the document, he will not be able to show he has a family to feed.

“Eight of my brothers are married, five of them have CNIC’s which say otherwise,” he told The Express Tribune.

Making it official

The document requires the signatures of two tribal elders, a tehsildar and an assistant political agent from their relevant agency. All these preconditions are hard to meet for the scattered displaced population.

With the agency’s political administration forced to work out of Bannu, there is a lot of red tape to cut through, said the IDPs. All this, they complained, takes a lot of palm greasing, which adds to the cost of the fake certificate.

Umzad Khan, a member of a displaced family from Datta Khel said, “I went through the entire process (of getting a marriage certificate made) and have submitted my nikah nama to NADRA.” He did so a month ago and has still not received a new CNIC which can prove he is a married man.

“NADRA also held on to my original CNIC [which stated I was single]; they just gave me a token but I am worried if I travel without my identity card, the police will harass me,” said Umzad. “I do not care much for this nikah nama—there is no such tradition in our area, it has no value for us,” he added. “But now I need it like every other IDP who needs a ration card.”

Umzad said this was an additional burden on people who are already suffering as a result of the displacement.

Karim Mehsud who is a lawyer based in Peshawar but originally from South Waziristan told The Express Tribune, “A nikah nama made in the absence of the bride has no value; it also has no value in the tribal areas governed by the FCR.” This is why tribesmen demand FCR reforms, he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4^th, 2014.