Aid to Pakistan, abuser of women?

Inevitably a case of a young woman having her nose and lips cut off in Pakistan has brought out the usual crop of SIFS who maintain that the offence is normal, acceptable, and part of Islam. True this is not an isolated case but the fact that it made the front pages is alone a contradiction of this view.

A frequent error when commenting on current affairs is to draw a general conclusion from a particular circumstance, setting off a chain of faulty logic.

Violence and atrocities are committed against women in Pakistan. Pakistan is a Muslim country. Therefore Muslims commit violence and atrocities against women, therefore Muslim men are evil, therefore Islam is an evil religion. Therefore Pakistan is not entitled to foreign aid because we should not support such a regime.

Muslims don’t speak out against the many evils committed by their co-religionists, therefore they sympathise with them, even support them.

So let’s first try to get a perspective and understanding of Pakistan..

Pakistan is ungoverned and mostly ungovernable. The FATA where the Talban was left to its own devices even under the Raj. Pakistan has never been a viable state; it has been run by the military for a very large apart of its history; civilian governments have always been irredeemably corrupt. The civil administration is rotten from top to bottom. Cruelty abounds in an almost casual fashion. The economy is controlled by the ‘400 families’; the two main political parties are family fiefs.

There are two Pakistani states; one is the formal administration; the other is the military.

If there is a reason not to give aid to Pakistan it is not because of appalling acts of individual cruelty.  The majority of people live a primitive life in a state of abject poverty. Children suffer from skin diseases because they are unable to wash because their rotten landlord charges them to take water out of the river. Slavery abounds under the guise of indentures labour. The illiteracy rate amongst rural women is enormous.

The kind of cruelty to women now reported is a consequence of primitively and casual  cruelty amongst a class of people who have not been allowed to become fully-functioning humans by their lords and masters, because it suits them to keep their tenants poor and ignorant. It is not because they are Muslims.

So should we give aid to the Pakistan government? My opinion is ‘no’. My reasons are that: aid should not be given to any country that is a nuclear power; that spends a disproportionate amount on the military; that is endemically corrupt and may therefore divert aid money into private pockets; and that is despite its rural poverty, a middle income country.

Should we give any aid to Pakistan? Yes, but only where it is specifically targeted; and monitored and audited by the donor directly; and in particular to the rural areas and to women.

And does the silence of British Muslims over such awfulness as reported, or, indeed, terrorists crimes imply that silence means approval? I guess that in some cases ‘yes’; in other cases it may imply ‘I hate what they are doing but I’m keeping my head below the parapet’.

Should not decent Muslims be up in arms? Perhaps. But I note that the Haditha incident - 24 unarmed people gunned down by US Marines, including women, children, a patient sick in bed and an old man in a wheel chair, the worst American atrocity since Mai Lai – passed of with no punishment and scant mention in the Western media.

MULTAN, Pakistan — A teenage Pakistani woman Monday told of her terror as her husband chopped off her nose and lips in a furious marital row, and threatened to kill herself unless the police brought him to justice.

The horrifying case underscores the brutal violence suffered by some women in Pakistan, where a domestic violence bill lapsed in 2009 after being held up in the Senate due to objections from religious parties.

Salma Bibi, 17, said her husband, 22-year-old Ghulam Qadir, subjected her to a beating, then bound her hands and feet with rope and hacked into her face with a razor in a remote village in the southwestern province Baluchistan.

"He repeatedly slapped my face and then went into the room and brought with him a locally made, sharp razor," she told AFP, speaking Baluchi in remarks translated by her uncle from a hospital bed in central Multan city.

"I started shouting in panic. He tied my hands and foot with a rope and chopped off my nose and lips," she added.

The teenager said police refused to register a case when her family complained about the attack, and threatened to kill herself without justice.

"I want justice and if it is not delivered to me, I will immolate myself in front of the Supreme Court.

"I will not sit in peace until my husband is brought to justice and gets punishment for the crime he committed," she added.

Ghulam and Salma married last year and live in the village of Karkana, 475 kilometres (300 miles) southwest of Islamabad.

Local officials insisted they were searching for Ghulam and would arrest him when caught.

"They often had quarrels as the girl used to spend more time with her parents," said Nadir Khan, an administration official in Musa Khel district, part of violence-torn Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has demanded action in the case, but many cases of violence against women in Pakistan go unpunished.

Human rights groups say Pakistani women suffer severe discrimination and widespread domestic violence, including so-called "honour" killings when a victim is murdered for allegedly bringing dishonour on her family.

Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP that domestic violence is a "serious, endemic problem in Pakistan" and called on the government to revive efforts to outlaw domestic violence.

But he praised the current parliament for a "fairly impressive" record on passing other legislation designed to protect women's rights.

A recent law against sexual harassment, for example, is "some of the most progressive and cutting edge in the region," he said.

Copyright © 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.

The reaction of the authorities seems to be correct, although their chances of finding the culprit in Baluchistan, a war zone itself in rebellion against Islamabad, is pretty remote.