“I’m so afraid all the time! I’d rather never leave the house . . . People scare me, all people. I trust no one.” Nazia who will soon be married off to pay for her uncle’s crime

KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA, PAKISTAN—At only 12, Nazia lives in expectation of the worst. As I step through the doorway of the humble compound her parents share with two other families in the Pashtun lands of northwest Pakistan, her small, fragile body trembles unwittingly. She knew I was coming, but learned too young to trust no one.

Nazia was only 5 when her father married her off to a much older man, a stranger, as compensation for a murder her uncle had committed. The decision to give the little girl away as payment, along with two goats and a piece of land, was made by a jirga — an assembly of local elders that makes up the justice system in most of Pakistan’s and Afghanistan’s tribal areas, where conventional courts are either not trusted or nonexistent.

Nazia was too young to understand what was happening when that man dragged her into the darkness. But she knew enough to realize something was terribly wrong. “I resisted, I cried and tried to hold on to the door jamb,” she remembers.

Nazia was taken to the jirga, displayed as a commodity before the circle of men and examined by the husband to be, who was allowed to decide whether she was good enough to be his wife. Nazia remembers the men staring at her deep brown eyes, her long, black hair — the humiliation of that scene is so utterly marked in her memory that she can barely finish the sentence before dissolving in tears.

The men in her family argued, unsuccessfully, that she was too young to be married off. In a rare decision, however, the jirga agreed the girl should not be handed over immediately. So the demanding husband would have to wait — and so has Nazia. Even among the women in the house, she wears a full-length black chador, as if a male intruder could suddenly enter that door again.

She is terrified of growing up. Her parents have been able to postpone their daughter’s fate — but not for much longer, certainly no later than age 14. Most child brides are pregnant by then.

Made to suffer

According to tradition, the compensation — a custom known as swara in Pashtun — should end the dispute and bring the two warring families together in harmony. In practice, however, the marriage only provides cover for revenge. Swara girls become the targets of all anger and hatred in their new home. They are often bitten, emotionally tortured and sometimes raped by other men in the family. They are made to suffer for a crime they did not commit.

The swara custom is a form of collective punishment. Nazia’s uncle — the perpetrator of the crime for which she is to be punished — killed a neighbour in a land dispute and then ran away. He left no children, so the jirga decided his older brother should pay in his place by sacrificing his own daughter.

Nazia’s father is a poor, uneducated farmer, and he could do nothing to contest this ruling. Having lost his land and livestock, he now works in temporary construction jobs, which pay $3 a day. His wife helps by cleaning neighbours’ houses for a few more rupees.

Nazia’s parents have decided this year will be her last year at school. The family has no money to pay for her books, and the expense seems pointless, given that she will soon be married.

Since her classmates found out about her fate, Nazia speaks to no one. “They point at me on the streets and call me ‘the swara girl,’ and they make fun of me,” she mumbles.

Eventually, she blurts out: “That was very painful, and I didn’t understand . . . It still hurts and upsets me. I’m so fed up with this feeling! I’m so afraid all the time! I’d rather never leave the house . . . People scare me, all people. I trust no one.”

Widespread custom

Despite being illegal, the custom of forcibly marrying off girls to resolve family and tribal disputes happens on an alarming scale across all provinces of Pakistan. It goes by different names but all its forms are equally cruel.

In Pakistan, at least 180 cases of swara were reported last year, due to the work of local journalists and activists. But there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of undocumented cases. Worldwide, an estimated 51 million girls below age 18 are married, according to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

A further 10 million underage girls marry every year — one every three seconds, according to ICRW. The legal age to marry in Pakistan is 18 for boys, but 16 for girls, though they can’t drive, vote, or open a bank account until adulthood. According to UNICEF, 70 per cent of girls in Pakistan are married before then.

The average age of swara girls is between 5 and 9 years old, according to registered cases and local accounts. In the tribal areas, a girl older than this is probably already promised to somebody else.

Mohammad Ayub, a British-trained psychiatrist from Lahore, has worked with child soldiers in Sudan and young Taliban recruits in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He now manages the Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital in the Swat Valley, an area that came under the spotlight when terrorists attempted to kill 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai because of her struggle to promote girls’ education.

“I saw small children holding guns bigger than themselves,” he says. “But these girls . . . It’s just as tragic.”

Many child brides come to Ayub with severe pain, sometimes blinded or paralyzed — the effects of a psychiatric condition known as “conversion disorder.” Practically unknown in the West since the beginning of the 20th century, it has reached epidemic proportions in the tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Ayub. It is a sort of psychological stress that manifests in physical ailments, including convulsions, paralysis or fits.

Little change

During the days of the British Empire, the region’s colonial rulers granted titles of nobility to powerful tribal leaders known as maliks in exchange for their loyalty; all local matters were devolved to the jirgas. To counter rebellion, the British instituted a set of laws — the Frontier Crimes Regulations — that deprived residents of legal representation in the traditional justice system. At the least sign of rebellion, the British could arrest suspects without trial and sometimes arrested whole tribes.

It was only in 2011 that President Asif Ali Zardari signed amendments to the regulations that now give citizens of the tribal areas the right to appeal decisions made by local political agents. The amendments also prohibit collective punishment and the arrest of children under 16 for crimes committed by others.

Despite such reforms, however, little change has been seen on the ground. A century after the set of laws was established, minors continue to be jailed or suffer for the crimes of others, according to human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Flaws in Pakistan’s judicial system also lead residents to rely on the jirgas. “Traditional courts in Pakistan have very bad records. There are unsolved cases going back more than 30 years, still in process, and the whole justice system is seen as highly corrupt,” says Fazal Khaliq, a Pakistani journalist and activist. “It is also very expensive. Courts charge for each and every service, so the poor can’t afford it, whereas the Islamic courts (jirgas) are free and speedy.”

In 2004, the Pakistani parliament passed an amendment to Pakistan’s penal code making swara a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Since then, around 60 decisions made by jirgas involving swara girls have been prevented by local courts, though in most tribal areas the law still does not apply.

The rise of Islamic militancy in Pakistan could only make things worse. As extremists grow more powerful, they have started imposing their own draconian rules on society — including even more discrimination against women.

Read more about: