Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [209]
When it comes to Baloch tribal tradition, cultural broadmindedness has however two limits, as far as I am concerned. The first is Baloch independence. It seems all too probable that Baloch tribalism would soon reduce this to a Somali-style nightmare, in which a range of tribal parties – all calling themselves ‘democratic’ and ‘national’ – under rival warlords would fight for power and wealth. The task of the Pakistani Frontier Corps on the ‘national day’ proclaimed by existing pro-independence parties was made easier by the fact that the nationalist parties could not even agree what flag to fly, let alone who should lead them.
In these circumstances, independent Balochistan would revert to its pre-British condition of unrestrained tribal warfare, but this time the wars would be fought not with swords and single-shot muskets, but with AK-47s, machine-guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and whatever heavier weaponry could be acquired with the proceeds of the heroin trade. Claims on the territory of all Balochistan’s neighbours would lead to economic blockade and make dependence on heroin and smuggling even more complete. Ethnic chauvinism would kill or chase out the ethnic minorities which provide whatever there is of a modern economy. Quetta would be wrecked in fighting with the Pathans and Hazara. As in Somalia, Al Qaeda and its allies would fish happily amid the ruins: a version of Somalia on the Persian Gulf.
At the end of Sylvia Matheson’s book, after recounting the killing of yet another lesser Bugti chief by his enemies, she asks:
And how and where can it end? Can these traditionally lawless tribes, so cussedly and illogically proud that they consider it more praiseworthy to steal cattle and grain than to demean themselves by working and earning money – can such men as these ever fit into the pattern of modern, democratic civilization as we know it, or must this dream be left for the coming generation?8
Her book was researched in the 1950s and published in 1967. Almost two generations have passed since then, but there is still very little sign of this ‘dream’ coming true among the Baloch tribes.
THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN
The second area where anthropological tolerance should have its limits is in the treatment of women. This is not universally bad, and it may have been better in the past. According to Sylvia Matheson:
In the early days of tribal society, women enjoyed a tremendous amount of liberty ... The women folk of the leading Khans of Kalat were noted for their activities in politics and warfare; segregation of the sexes is in fact fairly recent, probably introduced since the gradual opening up of the country to strangers.9
I did indeed meet one formidable aristocratic lady politician from the Kalat royal family, Mrs Rubina Irfan, a deputy from the formerly pro-Musharraf PML(Q) Party (in a sign of the irrelevance of national party labels in Balochistan, her husband, Agha Irfan Karim, is a deputy from the PPP). Unusually, her development fund has been responsible for some successful projects in Kalat. Even more unusually, she is the leading force in promoting women’s football in Pakistan. This has to be played by single-sex teams, indoors, and only in the presence of women and family members – still, a step forward.
Mrs Irfan also stressed that in really traditional Baloch tribal society women had more freedom than in partially modernized society, where male anxiety has been stirred up to pathological levels. Another very impressive lady (though a Mohajir, not an ethnic Baloch), Surriya Allahdin from the great Habibullah industrial family, described to me her charity’s success in setting up two girls’ schools in rural Balochistan, and how in one area this had led to the average age of girls at marriage going up from