Posted on 07/08/2002 12:07:48 PM PDT by robowombat
Punishing Naughty Boys - Pakistani Style
Actually, the 11-year old boy didn't do anything that could be considered even marginally naughty. Unless it's a crime to walk unchaperoned with a girl from a different tribe. If he does that, he'll be severely punished. Correction, not him, his sister. She will be forced to atone for her brother's 'sin' of walking with a girl from a higher-class tribe, by being brutally gang-raped, to bring shame on the whole family. Raping the sister presumably punishes the brother for doing what boys do naturally.
In this instance, four members of the tribal council took turns raping the girl in a mud hut, as the village stood outside laughing and cheering. "I wept, I cried," the young victim told the Associated Press investigating the incident. "I taught the holy Quran to the children in the village," she said. "Don't punish me for a crime that was not committed by me. But they tore my clothes off and raped me, one by one!" Yesiree, with punishment that severe you can bet next year's income that the boy learned his lesson: he will never walk alone with a girl from a different tribe again. Yeah, sure. That's 'crime and punishment' as practiced by the Pakistani tribes of Punjab province.
And now there we are, American troops trying to sell the idea of democratic freedoms to people with a culture like that. What this strange bunch needs first of all is a bit of civilizing. We'll get into the intricacies of democratic freedoms later. What made this incident possible - and another just like it, but that time the girl committed suicide after being raped - is the Pakistani tradition of tribal justice. In this scenario, tribal 'crimes to dignity' are punished outside of Pakistani law. Tribes, you see, have their own laws. The boy's father. Gulam Farid, pleaded with the tribal council for clemency for his son, telling them that the girl was safe with the boy because he was too young to have sex. But the council rejected his pleas and ordered the punishment of his sister. Nice. He gets off, she gets gang-raped. He goes free, she goes to the hospital - if there is one.
If this is confusing, as to who did what to whom, how many times, for doing something, it's understandable. In the American justice system a boy walking alone with a girl, even from the other side of town, is hardly tribunal material. Even if it were, punishing his sister for this unspeakable offense, is hardly justice served.
Yet, as ugly at this incident is, it points up an even more troublesome fact of life: the reality of harsh tribal laws that exists in this whole central Asia region. Tribes, by nature of their natural affinity for closeness and allegiance, are next to impossible to engage in meaningful 'outsider' communication. Moreover, given that tribes also war against each other, anything near a nation-wide transition to peace will require a Herculean effort by any conciliatory party.
You're wondering what this dissertation on tribal eccentricities has to do with our presence over there? Just this. I submit that this simple act of a boy committing a 'crime, and his sister getting brutally punished for it, shows the depth of tribal fixation on the twisted justice that American troops will encounter and have to deal with in God knows how many areas, and on how large a scale.
Tribes are mostly laws unto themselves. Our troops better learn this lesson fast, or pay the price.
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