[Dawn] ON Thursday, women protested bravely in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar against the discriminatory remarks made by a holy man -- and former MNA -- from Kohistan...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns....
in a Friday sermon. They were taking a stand in the face of threats issued by Maulvi Abdul Haleem, who declared that women working for NGOs would forcibly be married to local men if they tried to enter Kohistan. This was in keeping with his other obscurantist views, according to which girls should not be educated, women should not work unless accompanied by mahrams and 'honour' killing is a religiously-sanctioned practice. The common thread running through all of this is a fear of women's empowerment: if female NGO workers inform Kohistani women of their rights, the latter might start questioning the restrictions under which they are made to live.
The sermon was part of a worrying trend in Pakistain in which NGOs are increasingly under pressure from a variety of sources. Since Dr Shakil Afridi's involvement in the the late Osama bin Laden
... who knows that it's like to live in the belly of a whale only he's not living...
affair surfaced, western NGOs too have come under suspicion by the state, with employees being denied visas, supplies being held up, and organizations being monitored and even being asked to stop working in certain areas. Because vaccination was used as a front, the polio
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
campaign is now reportedly facing suspicion from the communities it tries to serve. The security situation in Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
and Fata prevents non-profit work there. Take, for example, the killing of a second worker of the Balochistan Rural Support Programme after six were kidnapped in the province, or reports this week of threatening letters issued against NGO workers by South Wazoo hard boys. Maulvi Haleem's sermon is a reminder that gender, too, is a barrier for NGO workers in parts of Pakistain. In a country where the government provides limited social services, this trend will only make life more difficult for Pakistain's disadvantaged and marginalised communities.