Women between the Raj and Riwaj

FATA reforms may need to start with introspection on how women are treated

PESHAWAR: In a recent conference about the tribal areas and their stagnant legal system, a bureaucrat raised an issue which perambulated around the room.

When the political rhetoric and legal quibbles were exhausted, he said the biggest fear for tribesmen was that their wives would leave them if a proper legal system was extended to Fata.

Without dissecting his argument and the thought process that makes decision-making a patriarchal phenomenon, what interested me was the manner in which the entire politico-legal discussion ended with the woman.

I will also refrain from forming a conceptual framework around the topic of how the concept of a woman in the tribal area is a direct reflection of its body of politics. Perhaps a Feminist understanding is necessary on the subject. What is more important is to determine from where the already generated discourse originates.

On an administrative level, Elaqa-e-Sarkar (an area under government jurisdiction) is politically administered and comprises 27% of the total landscape in Fata, while the remaining 73% is termed Elaqa-e-Ghair (the Other territory). While the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) functions within the limitations of the government administered areas, the Other territory functions on a locally compiled set of codes called the Riwaj also referred to as Pashtunwali.

The Riwaj is mostly an unwritten code of conduct, but in some areas it has been formally compiled. However, even a superficial understanding cannot guise its patriarchal bellicosity.

While several political debates have revolved around the FCR – which did not have a clause to protect the rights of women arguably till 2010—the Riwaj is seldom discussed. The old custom even identifies the amount of Walvar or bride money and all of this is done in the name of culture, tradition and honour; naturally.

Data from the FATA Secretariat’s 1998 census shows that the gender ratio in the tribal areas is 108 men to every 100 women. This is a highly unlikely number as 73% of the internally displaced people registered with the government were either women or children. The census data can be hardly trusted and even the government itself takes it with a pinch of salt. The larger issue here is not the census data, but the absence of women.

The fact that women are widely ignored is clearly demonstrated when the political administration hardly bothers to interfere in matters related to any sort of violence against women. The concept of Shamilat in which women cannot inherit property, because she herself is a property, is something that is acceptable to even the most educated of tribesmen.

While the struggle to end the FCR is now mainstream, it is high time such medieval laws are put to the question. The demand is to make Fata a separate province or either merge it with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but will that guarantee freedom to more than half of the area’s population?

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2015.