A gender-blind ‘neo-miratha’
ANALYSIS: A gender-blind ‘neo-miratha’ —Farhat Taj
Courtesy to "Daily Times"
Tribal leaders in FATA have been killed along with their female
relatives. The aim of such attacks seems to be to wipe out any
possibility, no matter how remote it may be, of the female heirs taking
up the anti-Taliban struggle
Miratha is a Pashto word that
refers to the now obsolete practice of killing all males, adult and
minors, in a family so that there are no male heirs left to inherit the
family property, which is taken over by the executer of the miratha
along with the female members of the family, who are considered as part
of the property in the patriarchal Pakhtun society. One may find people
in FATA who have know-how of the notion of miratha, whereas people in
the settled districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) abandoned miratha so
many decades back that many today do not even know what the notion
implies. Thus, for the Pakhtun, whether in KP or FATA, miratha is a
thing from their past and irrelevant to their lives today.
But
lo and behold! Miratha is back in the Pakhtun land in the form of
targeted killings of anti-Taliban families all across FATA and KP. All
over FATA, anti-Taliban people have been target-killed along with their
male heirs. Recently, Mian Rashid Hussain, the one and only son and male
heir of Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of KP, has been
killed. The ANP circles express the fear that next in line might be the
only male heirs of the top party leaders Asfandyar Khan and Afrasiab
Khattak, who both have one son each.
The neo-miratha is more
robust and all encompassing than the traditional Pakhtun one. The latter
excludes women, but the former entangles them. There has been a life
attempt on a sister of the ANP leader, Asfandyar Khan. Mian Iftikhar has
already said that the suicide bomber who attacked near his home within
days of his son’s targeted killing intended to go inside his house to
attack his female relatives. It is also reported that the mother and
wife of Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti were at the home of Mian
Iftikhar when the blast took place. Tribal leaders in FATA have been
killed along with their female relatives. The aim of such attacks seems
to be to wipe out any possibility, no matter how remote it may be, of
the female heirs taking up the anti-Taliban struggle.
Secondly,
the traditional miratha used to hit a single family. The neo-miratha is
obliterating all those across all walks of life who oppose, symbolically
or tangibly, the Taliban and Talibanisation
The question is:
who is executing this gender-blind neo-miratha? The militants, Taliban
or al Qaeda? Seemingly, it looks like this. The Taliban have been
accepting responsibility for most such attacks. But do the families all
over FATA and KP who suffer such attempts of neo-miratha also believe
so? No, they do not understand this to be like that. They hold the ISI
responsible for the neo-miratha.
They argue that in the state
policy of Afghanistan-specific jihad, any anti-Taliban Pakhtun simply do
not exist. The Pakhtun have to be presented to the world as the
Taliban. Pakhtunwali (the way of the Pakhtuns) and Talibanisation have
to be projected as one and the same thing. Anti-Taliban Pakhtun spoil
the whole game of jihad in Afghanistan. Anti-Taliban Pakhtun would be
least interested in promoting the state’s jihadi policy in Afghanistan.
Thus they have to be eliminated through the state-engineered Taliban.
Privately,
several ANP leaders and workers express serious complaints against the
Pakistani generals. Out of frustration they call the generals our niakan
(lords). The PPP government and President Asif Ali Zardari, they say,
are helpless in front of the powerful military establishment. The
president announced on August 14, 2009 the extension of the Political
Parties Act to FATA, but a formal notification never followed the
announcement due to opposition from the intelligence agencies. The
presence of political parties in FATA does not suit the military
establishment’s strategic games in the area. FATA has to be exclusively
left to the natural allies of the military establishment — the murderous
jihadis and the foxy political mullahs. And as far as the people of
FATA are concerned, well, their blood or sufferings do not matter at all
in the state’s jihadi pursuit in Afghanistan. They can go to hell.
Why
then is the ANP not quitting the government if it cannot function as it
wishes under the generals? The general perception is that the ANP is in
a fix. It would become much easier for the executers of the neo-miratha
to eliminate the leading ANP families in case they leave the security
arrangements that they have in place and are entitled to due to their
presence in the government. The other view is that the ANP must quit the
government and stand with the people of Pakhtunkhwa against the
generals. In that case, there will be many more killings among the
leading ANP families. But at least they will be standing by their own
people. Now the party leaders are constantly sacrificing and still their
people see them as part of the exploitative Pakistani elite class led
by the generals. This would also be a better opportunity to expose to
the world how the intelligence agencies of Pakistan are misrepresenting
the Pakhtun as the Taliban to the world.
The writer is a PhD Research Fellow with the University of Oslo and is currently writing a book, Taliban and Anti-Taliban
In : Farhat Taj
Notes