Aboard the Democracy Train

by Nafisa Hoodbhoy

  In 1992, a colleague tipped me, through police sources, about a harrowing story of a woman’s infidelity that she paid for with her life. Traveling to the outskirts of Karachi, I alighted at a typical Pashtun home in Pakhtoonabad, Mangophir, built atop hard barren rocks, where the wind blew dust for miles around. These were the kinds of homes that the Pashtun tribes – many of them fresh arrivals from Afghanistan – had built at barren hilly elevations in Karachi.

  Inside the humble home, an elderly light-skinned Afghan, Sattar Mandokhel sat with bowed head on his charpai (a knotted bed) – his remorseful blue eyes, lost in thought. The 70-year-old Mandokhel had just killed his 16-year-old wife for sneaking off in the middle of the night to meet his son from a previous wife. His son had given her away and actually helped Mandokhel kill her.

  The police had registered a murder case against the two men. Still, the old man seemed indifferent to the prospect of punishment. Instead, his blue eyes had a faraway look in them – perhaps lamenting the loss of the young woman he had acquired. Maybe he loved her and had killed her in a fit of jealousy. Already, the fact that the men were at home instead of in prison spoke volumes about the level of punishment that they would receive. Family members comforted Mandokhel, telling him that he had done the right thing.

  “This is the treatment that a woman gets if she is disloyal to her husband. These are our customs,” an older woman in the household told me rather sternly. They saw me – a young woman scribbling on her notebook, suppressing her horror at the human tragedy that had unfolded.

  There were hundreds of Pashtun-Afghan families like Mandokhel’s. They had migrated from Afghanistan to the contiguous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan and practiced customary laws like honor killings, even when they lived in urban settings. These murders are not unique to Pashtuns but rather, it is a practice under which thousands of women have been killed in Pakistan’s tribal provinces for “dishonoring” the family.

  In the wake of Islamization under Gen. Zia, society would become the larger prison for women. At family planning clinics, doctors told me that abortion was illegal under all circumstances. A clause in Gen. Zia’s infamous Qisas and Diyat Ordinance further deemed that women could be imprisoned for seven years for having an abortion. This came to a nation with an already rapidly growing population – one in which the average woman bears six children and has one of the highest fertility rates in the world.

  With abortion illegal, poor women either resorted to infanticide or simply disappeared after the child was born. Pakistan’s veteran social worker, Abdus Sattar Edhi tried to clear the fallout from the anti-abortion laws by appealing against female infanticide. Edhi and his wife, Bilquis placed cribs in public hospitals where women victims of rape or those unable to get an abortion left their infants and disappeared. The veteran social worker placed the babies in orphanages, where if they were lucky they were adopted.

  What Hope for Women?

  In this darkness, the only star that glimmered on the horizon appeared to be the young, politically ambitious Benazir Bhutto. It was a time when Gen. Zia had leaned heavily on clerics to issue fatwas (Islamic pronouncements) against women’s ability to rule. An Islamic advisor, Maulana Ansari suggested that Zia pass a law that no woman below 50 years of age could run for prime minister – and even then would need her husband’s permission. Women’s outcry stopped the proposal from reaching fruition but Benazir and her mother, Nusrat Bhutto were clearly on everyone’s minds.

  I first met Benazir Bhutto in 1986 at the Karachi Press Club (KPC) – where she had come to meet members of the press. A bevy of journalists surrounded her as she was taken to the upper floor of the building. The former president of KPC, the late Mahmood Ali Asad thrust me through the crowd to introduce me as the “active lady reporter from Dawn.” Poised and dignified – a white silk dupatta around her hair – Benazir smiled graciously and made room next to her with the words: “Oh, I thought you were a school girl.”

  I was seated next to her and I worked to take advantage of it. I asked Benazir if she would give me an interview for Dawn on the Islamic fundamentalist laws relating to women. The Zina Ordinances had by then forced women to disappear from public spaces. As a woman who campaigned for the public post of prime minister, Benazir’s position on the Islamist laws had not been publicized and I hoped to be able to do just that.

  Benazir looked hard at me, indicating that she was weighing up the benefit of giving me an interview that would strike against the ruling Gen. Zia. In characteristic fashion, she threw me a counter question: “Can you write a paper detailing the laws that have been passed under Gen. Zia and their implications for women?”

  The counter-offer took me by surprise. And yet, living with the effects of the discriminatory laws every day, I was happy to further her understanding of them. We parted with a common understanding that I would write a paper on the situation and she would give me an exclusive interview on the subject.

  For the next several weeks I researched the Islamist laws at a little library in Karachi, set up by an academically-oriented women’s organization called Shirkat Gah. It was the forerunner to the activist Women’s Action Forum and War Against Rape – civil society organizations from a privileged class, which took enormous risks to protect the most vulnerable sections of society.

  I had the document delivered to Benazir and received word from her party members that it was a “well researched piece.” Still, three months went by and there was no word from the woman who went on to become prime minister.

  Finally, out of the blue I got a phone call from 70 Clifton, Benazir’s ancestral mansion in Karachi, saying that she wanted to see me. Armed with a tape recorder, I sped to her residence, ready to interview her. To my surprise, a handful of women activists were already there. Benazir had invited them to consult whether she should give me the interview.

  It was 1986 and Benazir was still unmarried. That was apparently the stumbling block for the 33-year-old woman, who – notwithstanding her Western education – had roots in Larkana’s feudal culture. “What will the Mullahs think about me, a single woman…talking about issues such as rape?” she quizzed us frankly.

  I was perplexed. As privileged women, we knew that the Islamist laws were implemented in the harshest possible way on poor women. But I wondered if Benazir had thought about the irony of becoming the prime minister of a country where discriminatory laws would still treat her as a second-class citizen.

  The Western-educated women – mostly from the Women’s Action Forum – had long waited for the opportunity to turn around the situation for women. Knowing that Benazir stood a good chance of becoming Pakistan’s first woman prime minister, they convinced her that the time was right for her to pledge her support for women’s rights.

  Apparently, our presence prevailed on Benazir. The next day, I got an urgent message from 70 Clifton that Benazir wanted to see me right away. Once again, I sped in my purple, soap-shaped car to her ancestral home. Benazir didn’t need to be asked any questions. Instead, in an unstoppable monologue, she regurgitated the points I had provided in my paper.

  The following day, July 11, 1986, Dawn published my 45-minute interview with the headline, “Benazir Decries Laws and Attitudes that Degrade Women.” Benazir had praised her late father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto for his role in the advancement of women’s rights. Most importantly, she made a commitment that if elected as prime minister she would repeal the discriminatory laws passed by Gen. Zia ul Haq.

  A Powerless Woman Prime Minister

  My forays into interior Sindh – where nothing has moved for centuries – made me increasingly pessimistic that Benazir could effect change for women. Westerners can best understand the slow pace of life in traditional, rural Sindh as a throwback to thirteenth-century Christian Byzantine Europe, where women were veiled, house-bound and essentially considered as the property of men.

  Living in the West, I was often asked how a woman from the traditional Muslim society co
uld rise to become prime minister. The simple answer is that to the masses Benazir was the daughter of the populist Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose execution had transformed her into an “avenging angel.” Also, as a woman from a privileged background, she skillfully used her connections inside and overseas to maneuver her place to the top.

  Otherwise, the dark realities for rural women are even hidden from the nation’s elite. In 1991, a male colleague and I headed to a small town in interior Sindh, where the peasants and low-income traders were spiritual disciples of feudals in Benazir’s cabinet. We were escorted by guards through a magnificent fortress with high walls and cemented pathways, which wove into a labyrinth. My male colleague and I were taken into a grand drawing room with fine carpets and engraved tables.

  The feudal lord greeted me pleasantly – the “honorary male” from a prominent newspaper. Afterwards, when we finished a frank, at times “off the record” type of conversation, he suggested I visit the women’s quarters. Politely, I rose and was escorted by the servant to the women folk. My colleague stayed back; he was after all a Na Mehram – a man unrelated by blood to the women.

  I walked through a maze that led up to the women’s quarters. Wearing loosely draped chador (a type of veil), the women here lived in an age reminiscent of sixteenth-century Moghul India. Never exposed to the outside world, they did not have a lot to talk about. We exchanged pleasantries; I explained that I had come from Karachi to do a story. They did not know what it meant to be a journalist, nor did career prospects seem interesting to them.

  When these women from feudal families went outdoors, they donned black veils with tiny holes for their eyes. Even so, it was the feudal lord who determined the liberties that the women of his family could avail; they were required to travel in chauffer-driven cars with black drapes, dress modestly at all times and under no circumstances speak to men outside the family.

  I spent a night at this haveli (feudal home) living as the women did, with days and nights of solitude. At night, uniformed guards patrolled their ancient fortress. My ears picked up the changing of guards in the dead silence of the night. “Allah Sain Khair” (by God’s grace), “Maula Sain Khair” (all is safe).

  I left the fortress and continued traveling across interior Sindh. My freedom was in stark contrast to the lives of these women – creatures starved even of simple sensory impulses. The time I spent reporting in Sindh would inform me of the importance of the veil. By a process of osmosis, girls grew up to believe that their path to fulfillment lay in marriage and children.

  In 1993, I attended a wedding in a small town in interior Sindh. It was a private event but my journalist’s eye took mental snapshots. Women arrived in carefully designed, expensive shalwar kameez and dupattas, with matching jewelry and make-up – all designed to show their standing in the feudal hierarchy. Chaperoned by male relatives and wearing black veils, the women showed their faces only after they were exclusively surrounded by their own sex. Outside, volunteers stood guard to stop any peeping toms.

  The carefully made-up women exposed adaptations of risqué dresses worn by foreign models that one saw on CNN and the Indian ZEE television channels. Captivated by the glamorous images of women, their female viewers copied the fashions in the privacy of their homes and exposed them to other women.

  Apparently, the spread of cable television in the remote areas of rural Sindh had created all sorts of unfulfilled desires among the cloistered women. On one occasion, I sat with the young wife of a feudal lord as she watched cable television in a remote town of Sindh. Turning away momentarily from watching a Western film, she sighed wistfully: “It’s very hard to be locked indoors after living in Karachi.” Still, sensitive to small town gossip about who was a “good woman,” she had never left the house alone.

  In the rare case where a young woman from a small town joined a university or medical college, she would likely join the urban women’s movement. Still, societal pressures on women to marry and have children were overwhelming. It left the women blissfully unaware that the military government had passed Islamic legislation that gave them an inferior status before the law.

  Brides of the Quran

  Journeying through interior Sindh, I stumbled upon large numbers of unmarried, graying women who lived in ancestral homes located in Hyderabad, Thatta, Matiari and Hala. Time hung heavy on their hands. Equipped with little education and no exposure to the outside world, these women had never been exposed to men in their lives.

  In 1992, during a journalistic jaunt, I discovered a horrendous custom that kept these women housebound. Under Islamic law, women inherit property when they marry. But in the absence of male relatives, feudals in Sindh refuse to give daughters their inheritance. Instead, big feudals of Sindh and southern Punjab, who derive their power base from the land, prefer to keep their daughters unmarried.

  In a more elaborate example of how feudals manipulate women’s lives for financial gain, the Syed communities – who trace direct ancestry to Prophet Mohammed – have their daughters married off to the Muslim holy book, the Quran. That literally seals their prospects of marriage. Under this practice – called “haq bakshna” (waiver of rights), women place their hand on the Quran and waive the Islamic right to marry and inherit property. Even more ingeniously, they are told that their virginity gives them a spiritual status and a duty to dispense talismans to sick children.

  The paradoxes were stunning. Feudal politicians took orders from a woman prime minister, Benazir Bhutto even as they kept their own women locked up or “married to the Quran.” Some of them were superiors in her party and took orders from the woman prime minister to wield power in their own fiefdoms. The big feudals, who form the backbone of autocratic governments, have kept their control of women well-hidden from public view.

  Women are Broken to Break Benazir

  Benazir Bhutto’s first year and a half in power flew without her taking on the issue of women. But what was truly shocking was that after she was ousted in August 1990, opponents exploited her vulnerability as a woman and used rape to humiliate her female supporters.

  Early one morning in November 1991, I received word that a friend of Benazir Bhutto, Veena Hayat – the daughter of a feudal politician and one of the founders of Pakistan, Sardar Shaukat Hayat – had undergone a traumatic experience.

  Driving up to Veena’s home in Defense Society, I found her lying in bed, numb with shock and anger. Upper class and Western educated, Veena had lived alone – a rather rare occurrence in Pakistan’s society. Surrounded by friends, she told me in a voice shaking with anger that five armed men had barged into her residence late at night. They had cut off her telephone connections and proceeded to torment and rape her all night, asking about her connections with Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari and other key PPP figures.

  Veena’s allegations made the headlines sizzle: she had blamed an advisor to the Sindh chief minister, Irfanullah Marwat who was also the son-in-law of Pakistan’s president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Although a poor washerwoman with PPP affiliations, Khursheed Begum had also been raped at gunpoint by armed thugs at around the same time, the response to her rape had been relatively muted.

  In a third incident aimed at demoralizing the Benazir camp, her opponents had tortured a woman office-bearer of the PPP’s student wing, Rahila Tiwana. With Benazir seeking a return to power, her women supporters were now being singled out for rape.

  In the aftermath of Veena’s rape, press statements poured in calling for the arrest of the influential culprits. Veena’s father, Sardar Shaukat Hayat made headlines as he stepped into the fray. A former associate of the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah – the victim’s father – headed a jirga (a consultative assembly of male tribal elders) that demanded Marwat be punished. Upper-class women rallied around the Hayat family to demand an end to the use of rape as a political weapon.

  Still, as in so many incidents, the well-connected accused were never brought to trial. Instead, coming after the att
acks on journalists, the outrage at Veena Hayat’s rape would become one more incident which eroded confidence in the Nawaz Sharif government and helped pave the way for Benazir Bhutto to return to power for a second term.

  The Beijing Conference on Women

  In 1993, women cheered as Benazir returned to power. For urban, professional educated women it was one more opportunity to win women’s rights and repeal discriminatory laws. The more established women’s organizations like All Pakistan Women’s Association and the Federation of Business and Professional Women held city-wide events to express pride that Benazir had risen to the unique position of becoming the twice-elected woman prime minister of a Muslim country.

  This time, Benazir tried to fulfill some promises by appointing women in top governmental positions. The move did not sit well with members of the civil service, who suddenly found themselves yanked aside by the PPP’s political appointees. They complained that the positions had been doled out by Benazir to gain loyalty for her party rather than on the basis of merit.

  The PPP’s opportunity to bring change for women arose around the 1995 Fourth World Women Conference in Beijing. By then, my reputation as a reporter espousing women’s rights was firmly established. Despite my critical reporting on the PPP government, I was invited to Islamabad to help prepare a National Report to recommend a Platform for Action in 13 key areas ear-marked by the United Nations.

  The NATREP, as it was called, was to be presented to international delegates at Beijing. As the head of the “Women and Media” group, I spent weeks in Islamabad writing a chapter for NATREP with wide-ranging recommendations for women. Shortly thereafter, the PPP government nominated a few of us from the non-governmental sector to form part of their government delegation to Beijing.