Pakistan_ A Hard Country - Anatol Lieven [60]
THE POLICE
The problems affecting the police and the official judicial system in Pakistan are so many and so great that it is hard adequately to describe them, but one single word that explains many of the others is yet again ‘kinship’. In the words of a police officer in central Punjab:
Families and clans here stick together, so if you really want to arrest one person here and prosecute him successfully, you may need to arrest ten, or threaten to arrest them – the original suspect plus three for perjury, three for bribing the police and judges, and three for intimidating witnesses. And if the family has any influence, the only result will be to get yourself transferred to another district. So I’m afraid that it is often much easier just not to arrest anyone.
Take the FIR [First Information Report] system. If two individuals or families clash, and someone is killed, the dead man’s family will lodge an FIR with one police station saying that he was wantonly murdered, and the other family will lodge an FIR with another police station saying that they were attacked and acted in self-defence – and they may be telling the truth. The police and the courts have to judge between them on the basis of evidence, every bit of which is probably false in one direction or another. So either the case goes on for ever, or it is resolved in favour of which side has more power and influence.
If it’s an especially bad case and you are sure of what happened, you may be able to bargain with the family or with local politicians to give you the man you want. But then of course you will have to give them something in return, or let one of their members off in some other case. This is typical give and take – what we call here lena dena.
The problem for the police and the courts begins with lying. Astonishingly – at least, it astonished me – it is not permitted in Pakistani courts to swear on the Koran (that is, the Book itself, not in the words of the Koran) when giving evidence. I asked Sayyid Mansur Ahmed, vice-president of the Karachi Bar Association, why ever not. ‘It’s very simple,’ he replied with a cheerful smile. ‘Most people would swear and then lie anyway. That would bring religion into disrepute – and you are not supposed to do that in Pakistan.’
British officials working in the field recognized this problem and attributed it to their own system, drawing a contrast yet again with traditional local jirgas and panchayats where, since everyone knows everyone else and the basic facts of the case, outrageous lying is pointless. In the words of General Sir William Sleeman, commander of the campaign to suppress thuggee:
I believe that as little falsehood is spoken by the people of India, in their village communities, as in any part of the world with an equal area and population. It is in our courts of justice where falsehoods prevail most, and the longer they have been anywhere established, the greater the degree of falsehood that prevails in them.13
Denzil Ibbetson, the great colonial administrator and ethnographer of the Punjab, writes of the ordinary Baloch being naturally frank and honest in his statements, ‘except where corrupted by our courts’.
Once again, the people doing the lying and manipulating would in most cases not feel that they were acting immorally; rather, that they were obeying the higher moral law of loyalty to kin. And, once again, there is no essential difference in this regard between the big ‘feudal’ politician and the small tenant farmer. They all, each according to their station and resources, do their utmost to help relatives and allies by deceiving, corrupting or pressuring the police and the courts. Pressure can be directly physical (especially in the case of the Islamist extremist groups) but more often it comes through political influence.
This goes up to the very top. Thus in 2009 I was sitting in the office of the inspector-general of police in one of Pakistan’s provinces, when a call came through from the province’s chief minister – who was roaring so