analysis: Assaulting the Pakhtun culture —Farhat Taj
analysis: Assaulting the Pakhtun culture —Farhat Taj
Courtesy to "Daily Times"
The Pakhtun culture is reflected in Ghaffar Khan’s non-violent
movement, in the mysticism of Rahman Baba’s poetry and in the
romanticism of Ghani Khan’s poetry. This is a society that produced
hundreds of anti-Taliban lashkar leaders all over Pakhtunkhwa who were
target killed because they insisted that Talibanisation is the
antithesis of
Pakhtun culture
Essentialism means that
people have an intrinsic ‘essence’ that never changes. Social
scientists agree that all human relations and activities that come
under the socio-cultural realm are open to changes in accordance with
the changing requirements of time and circumstances.
The Pakhtun
have been assaulted with essentialism in literature and media. A latest
example is Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed’s article ‘The 1947-48 Kashmir War’ (Daily
Times, March 16, 2010). Dr Ahmed’s writes: “The tribal warriors quickly
forgot the mission they were supposed to achieve, and succumbed prey to
a vice deeply rooted in their culture and history — looting, pillaging
and raping.” I was surprised to read these comments because recently he
wrote another piece ‘Ghaffar Khan, Islam and non-violence’ (Daily
Times, January 26, 2010) in which he says: “Those who want to find
practical guidance on the Islamic philosophy of non-violence in
contemporary times should study the life of Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the
activities of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement.” The two articles leave
one wondering what is Dr Ahmed’s real understanding of the Pakhtun
culture, the one embodied by Ghaffar Khan and his mass-based movement
or the “looting, pillaging, raping tribal warriors”, especially given
the fact that Bacha Khan’s movement is well rooted in the tribal area?
I
am not denying the fact that the tribal fighters did indulge in human
rights violations in Kashmir. They should never have gone to Kashmir
for that so-called jihad in 1947-48. It is also a fact that the entire
tribal population of FATA never joined them. Only a tiny fraction of
the population went for ‘jihad’. How can the activities of that
fraction be labelled as ‘rooted’ in the culture of the entire
population? Seemingly, many more Muslim Punjabis killed, pillaged and
raped non-Muslim Punjabis and vice versa during the partition in 1947.
I have yet to see any Pakhtun saying on a national level public forum
like the Daily Times that all that savagery is rooted in the Punjabi
culture.
Secondly, the tribesmen were encouraged and facilitated
by the state to go to Kashmir for ‘jihad’. It was the responsibility of
the state to have disciplined them. I am not ready to believe that
indiscipline too is rooted in the Pakhtun culture. If so, how come the
Pakistan Army has disciplined so many Pakhtun soldiers in their rank
and file, including those from the tribal areas?
It is now well
documented that soldiers of the Pakistan Army did commit rapes and
murders during the 1971 crisis in the East Pakistan. But I have not
come across any documents saying that the Pakhtun soldiers of the army
‘outshone’ their Punjabi colleagues on the occasion due to cultural
reasons.
Some among the “looting, pillaging and raping”
tribesmen were not averse to heed reason during the ‘jihad’, as
indicated by Frank Leeson, a former khasadar officer (1945-47) in North
Waziristan. He saw with his own eyes the tribesmen transported to
Kashmir. In his book, Frontier Legion, he narrates this incident. Some
tribal fighters, mostly Mehsud, attacked a convent. They were lining up
the nuns for summary execution when another tribesman, a young Afridi
officer of the Azad Kashmir Army, who had apparently been educated in a
convent, rushed to the spot and argued with the Mehsuds to spare the
lives of the nuns. Eventually, he managed to persuade the Mehsuds to
leave the convent in peace.
Moreover, Frank Leeson also informs
that the Faqir of Ipi, the man who led the resistance in Waziristan
against the British in the 1930s and 40s, stopped the Waziri tribesmen
from the Kashmir jihad, although some renegade Waziris did defy his
instruction.
Raping can disrupt normal social and even economic
life in any human society. Therefore, every society has laws and norms
in place to stop it from occurring. It is certainly the case in the
tribal culture. Even today, thousands of households in FATA do not have
clean drinking water in or close to their houses. It is the young
able-bodied women who fetch water every single day from sources in the
mountains that may be several kilometres away from their homes. Like
other parts of Pakistan, women in FATA too contribute in agriculture.
Moreover, many men are labour migrants in Karachi or the Middle East,
leaving behind women to run the households, which necessarily entails
countless engagements in the public sphere. There are also tribal women
who participate in the formal job market. How could women perform all
those duties in the presence of a culturally rooted tradition of raping?
The
Pakhtun culture is reflected in Ghaffar Khan’s non-violent movement, in
the mysticism of Rahman Baba’s poetry and in the romanticism of Ghani
Khan’s poetry. This is a society that produced hundreds of anti-Taliban
lashkar leaders all over Pakhtunkhwa, including FATA, who were target
killed because they insisted that Talibanisation is the antithesis of
Pakhtun culture. This society produced hundreds of thousands of
citizens, including the tribesmen and women, who are well integrated in
the state structure of Pakistan. It is the same culture that has
hundreds of thousands of hard working and law-abiding labour migrants
abroad. Like any human society, the Pakhtun society is a mix of good
and bad and so this is the society that produced Mullah Omar,
Fazllullah, Baitullah and the whole lot of the Pakhtun Taliban and the
tribal warriors of the Kashmir ‘jihad’. So my question is: what is the
culture of the former group of people, if the activities of the latter
group represent the ‘deep-rooted’ Pakhtun culture?
This article
must not be seen as disrespect to Dr Ahmed. I believe his writing is an
important contribution towards the much-needed deconstruction of the
discourse of violent jihad and religious obscurantism in our country. I
would just request him not to attribute essentialist ideas to the
Pakhtun culture in the tribal or any other area of the land. Such
essentialism demonises that society and contributes to justifying the
ongoing killing of the Pakhtun.
The writer is a research
fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, University
of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and
Advocacy. She can be reached at bergen34@yahoo.com
In : Farhat Taj
Notes