MADYAN: One sunny afternoon as
she skipped home from school, Saneeda was accosted by her estranged father, who
wanted to marry her to a man she'd never met to settle a debt of
"honour". She was five years old.
A few months earlier, Saneeda's
father Ali Ahmed had eloped with a girl from another valley. To avoid violent
revenge from her family, he promised to give them his daughter and niece Sapna
in marriage.
Offering young girls as brides
in compensation to settle disputes persists in certain areas of Pakistan.
In Saneeda's home district of
Swat, in the country's northwest, the practice is known as "swara".
Government data show that it is
on the rise in Swat, four years after an army operation ended the Taliban's
brutal two-year rule in the scenic valley.
Nine cases were registered in
the area in 2013, up from just one in 2012. Rights groups say the true number
is much higher.
"My father stopped me in
the street and told me that he has given me in swara and soon will hand me over
to a man who will be my husband," Saneeda, wearing a golden shawl with red
and purple embroidery, told AFP, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment.
Her mother dismissed it at
first, but the arrangement had been ordered by a jirga, a traditional tribal
gathering, and the gravity of the situation soon became clear.
"We initially thought they
can't take this girl away but then they increased pressure with every passing
day to give her in swara," Fazal Ahad, Saneeda's maternal uncle, told AFP.
Eventually Saneeda's family got
a court order protecting her. Police arrested her father and the jirga members
who had decided to give her in swara.
A lucky escape, but Saneeda,
now aged seven, still faces discrimination and mockery.
"Whenever I go to school,
children taunt me and tell me that I have been given in swara and will be
married to a man," she said.
Saneeda was unusual in that her
family challenged the jirga's ruling. In Pakistan's patriarchal society, where
family reputation is paramount, airing the "dirty laundry" in public
in this way is very rare.
"There are many other
cases of swara, but people in our area don't go to police and court and don't highlight
such cases. We don't take matters of our women to the court — the victimised
girls have to bear it all," said Ahad.
The authorities do not keep
detailed data on swara, but Samar Minallah, an activist who made an acclaimed
documentary on the practice, said she had identified at least 132 cases around
Pakistan in 2012.
The other girl given by
Saneeda's father, 16-year-old Sapna, had to abide by the jirga ruling and
settled with the husband they chose for her.
The custom and the code of
silence that surrounds it is so strictly followed that AFP was unable to reach
her to speak about her experience.
Ahad said the nine Swara cases
reported in Swat are just the tip of the iceberg, but victims were becoming
increasingly willing to speak out.
"People are slowly getting
aware through media that this custom is an evil, so some of them have started
reporting," he said.
Forced marriage under swara is
against the law, but police say that even when a complaint is brought there is
great reluctance among witnesses to give statements.
"In the cases of swara,
people don't provide evidence against each other, because they are from the
same village and community," Naveed Khan, a senior police official told
AFP in Mingora, the district headquarter of Swat.
"In the single swara
marriage case in 2012, all 12 accused were set free because there was lack of
evidence against them. Nobody speaks up in such cases."
Officers arrested 65 suspects
in the nine swara cases in 2013, including Saneeda's father, Khan said, but
their fate rests with the courts.
Women's rights groups say the
government needs to do more to crack down on swara.
"There are more than 15
cases of Swara, which have been highlighted," Tabassum Adnan Safi, the
chair of a local women's campaign group, told AFP.
"We are working to make
women aware of the evilness of this custom. Besides these awareness campaigns,
we also protest against Swara and raise voice for the protection.
"But getting evidence in
such cases is no doubt a big challenge because nobody talks about it."
Minallah says that nothing will
change until the police and prosecutors are prepared to challenge the authority
of local elders — a difficult task in areas where such traditional power
structures are deeply entrenched.
"An awareness has been
created against swara, that is why there are more reported cases, but the
authorities need to take strict action against jirgas and stop them violating
the law," she said.
And there are those, even in
the legal community, who defend the practice staunchly.
"It is helpful in removing
deadly enmities among scores of tribes, saves dozens of lives and brings peace
among families," Syed Kareem Shalman, a practising lawyer in Mingora, told
AFP.
"If a family, which gets a
bride in Swara mistreats her, faces revenge from the family who give their
daughter to resolve the dispute."
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