Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [58]
The reality of all this was brought home to me by the Sardar of one tribe in Balochistan – a Pathan tribe, but which, unlike the Pathans of the NWFP and FATA, had been heavily influenced by autocratic Baloch traditions. If his very candid and all-too-human account of his approach seems less than heroic, I invite you, dear Reader, to ask yourself whether you or I would really do so much better.
This Sardar is a ‘Nawabzada’, the descendant of a tribal chieftain who fought against the British, but later compromised with them and was given the title of ‘Nawab’ – another sign of the old Frontier tradition whereby yesterday’s enemy is today’s ally, and vice versa. His tribe straddles the Afghan frontier, but in Afghanistan his influence, though present, is greatly reduced. The Sardar’s grandfather sat in the Pakistani Constituent Assembly of 1947.
The walls of the Sardar’s mansion in Quetta are festooned with the heads of mountain goats and photographs of ancestors bristling with guns, swords and facial hair. The resemblance in terms of both hair and general expression was rather marked. The Sardar’s own facial hair is more limited – a moustache and a pair of small sideburns, which together with his long curling hair gave evidence of student years in London in the late 1960s. He spoke of his time in London with deep regret as ‘the happiest time of my life’, but with a disarming smile, admitted that ‘in the end, I just could not bear to live my whole life in a place where, when I walk down the street, people do not bow and say, ‘Salaam aleikum, Sardar Sahib’.
The Sardar described his judicial role as follows:
In my tribe, the poorest man if he gets into trouble will be helped by his fellow tribesmen, led by me and my cousins. Even if he drives a rickshaw or sells boot polish he can look anyone in the eyes because he has a chief and a powerful tribe behind him ...
Every month, hundreds of people come to me or my cousins to have their problems solved. If it is a simple case, we make decisions ourselves. If more difficult, we call a jirga, and from the jirga people are chosen as a committee to look into the case. We choose people depending on the nature of the case. If it is a transport problem, we choose people with transport experience. If business, then businessmen. If the parties to the case want it to be judged according to the Shariah, we include a mullah. We make the judgment, and we enforce it.
For example, a few months ago one boy from the tribe killed another boy. We are arranging compensation. They are both from our tribe, so that was quite easy. A more difficult case recently was when one of our women was raped by two young men from another tribe. We caught the men, and our tribal jirga met, and called witnesses according to the Shariah and modern law. We consulted with the elders of the other tribe. They offered money compensation but we can only take this in cases of murder or wounding. To take it in cases of the rape of our women would disgrace us. Then they said, you can kill the older boy, but please spare the younger one. So we decided to kill the older boy, and slit the nose and ears of the younger one ... The older one was twenty-something, the younger is sixteen ...
‘Rough justice,’ I suggested.
Yes, but if we had gone to the government law it would have taken years, and in that time they would have been free to roam the streets raping more girls and laughing at us.