Hiding from a feudal custom in Pakistan

For more than a year, as Pakistan lurched from one crisis to another, Dawood Nazir Ahmed and his extended family have been in hiding, living in a tent made of sheets and plastic bags.

They are being hunted by his wife’s brothers, who were given the right to take three of Ahmed’s nieces when a tribal court ruled on a family dispute. Fleeing to Islamabad, the family appealed for help from the country’s then-Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.

That’s when their troubles became entwined with Pakistan’s larger woes.

Chaudhry, who had been trying to stop the traditional use of young girls as compensation for crimes against family honor, was ousted from office when President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency last November. He remains under house arrest.

“We’re worried [the brothers] will kill us or take the girls away,” said Ahmed, 37. “Our hopes are with Iftikhar Chaudhry. He is the only hope for the poor.”

For ordinary Pakistanis, freeing Chaudhry and reversing Musharraf’s crackdown on the country’s independent judiciary was one of the foremost issues -- along with higher prices for wheat and electricity -- that sent them to the polls Feb. 18 to root out Musharraf allies.

A push by the newly seated parliament to reinstate the ousted judges could threaten the continued rule of Musharraf, a key player in the U.S.-led war on terror.

Not reinstating them could mean further unrest in a country already under siege by militants in tribal areas and, more recently, its most populous cities.

“There may be street violence and it may lead to a civil war situation if the feeling continues that people are not getting justice,” said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, head of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency.

The ongoing political crisis has led to paralysis in some parts of the government, leaving many Pakistanis in limbo.

Ahmed’s problems began in January 2006 in a patch of sugar-cane fields where the family lived in southern Sindh province. Ahmed and his wife, Waziran, had been planning to get married, but her family called off the marriage and promised her to an older but wealthy man.

When she refused, a brother burned her wrists with a hot iron rod and threatened to kill her, Waziran said. She and Ahmed eloped instead.

When word reached the village that the couple had married, Waziran’s family approached the town elders. A tribal council decided that the couple either turn themselves in and be killed for tainting her family’s honor or Ahmed must hand over three nieces -- Aneela Sikander Ali, barely a few months old, Tasleem Ali Asghar, 1, and Shaneela Sikander Ali, 2. The girls would eventually be married to Waziran’s brothers.

Ahmed’s family didn’t wait for the tribal ruling. Eventually 36 family members fled. Ahmed approached police chiefs and district courts outside his village, but no one was willing to investigate the case: Waziran’s family was related to the district’s feudal lord, the area’s main landowner.

Human-rights activists say Pakistan’s feudal structure in rural areas has helped keep alive the custom of offering girls as compensation, despite a 2006 law that mandates up to 10 years’ imprisonment for anyone caught issuing such a verdict.

“It’s a tribal custom that’s completely against Islam,” said anthropologist Samar Minallah, who helped bring the Ahmeds’ case to the Supreme Court. “But in these tribal cases, the feudal lords give the rulings and they want to make people happy.”

Justice Chaudhry confronted the tradition, however, agreeing to hear petitions in nearly 30 such cases since 2005. He overturned many of the tribal council decisions and sent some participants in those decisions to jail.

Chaudhry first heard the Ahmeds’ case last March. Ahmed said he remembered Chaudhry turning to the judge next to him and saying, “We need to end this custom.”

But a few days later, Chaudhry was deposed. Musharraf accused him of corruption and abuse of power, but Chaudhry also had upset the president by probing into a number of sensitive issues, including the disappearance of hundreds of suspected terrorists arrested by police.

Minallah, who brought many of the cases before the Supreme Court and made a documentary on the subject, said Chaudhry asked her about the Ahmed family’s whereabouts during his first months out of office. “He was worried for them,” she said.

Chaudhry was reinstated by his fellow Supreme Court justices in July, and a month later he ordered the district police to investigate the Ahmeds’ case and provide them a safe return home.

But soon after his court order arrived in the family’s district of Naushahro Feroze, Musharraf declared a state of emergency because of the country’s wider unrest and again deposed Chaudhry. A district administrator told Ahmed’s father he no longer had to obey the order.

Since Chaudhry’s removal in November, a number of such cases have been petitioned to the Supreme Court, but the new court named by Musharraf has not heard any, said I.A. Rehman, director of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission.

Mubarak Bhatti, a journalist with Sindh province’s KTN-News, said 18 girls have been exchanged in such cases in his area since the chief justice was removed.

“[Tribal council members] say they’re not scared anymore,” he said. “They say, ‘We’re going to continue this custom.’ ”

The practice is centuries old. Supporters say that it helps to avert bloodshed and has helped poor families avoid turning over precious land in settlements.

Mahmood Saleem Mahmood, secretary of the Ministry of Women’s Development, said the activists’ claims that the government is not doing enough regarding the cases was “propaganda.”

“If they want something done according to their thoughts, that’s not possible,” he said. “Pakistan society can’t be a modern society like the West.”

Meanwhile, as he hides on the outskirts of Islamabad, Ahmed said he holds fast to the memory of Chaudhry looking down at him from the bench and giving him words of hope: “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to you.”