The Economist USA - 22.02.2020

The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020 Asia 39

1

E

lections aresupposed to bring stabil-

ity to politics and legitimacy to the vic-

tor. Afghanistan’s recent presidential poll,

alas, has provided neither. For one thing,

only a small proportion of Afghans voted.

Worse, it has taken the election commis-

sion an agonising five months to count the

ballots, adjudicate disputes and declare a

winner: Ashraf Ghani, the incumbent, with

50.6% of the vote. What is more, his closest

rival, Abdullah Abdullah, rejects the result

and has declared himself president, de-

spite winning only 39.5% by the official

tally. It does not help that there would have

been a run-off had Mr Ghani not scraped

above 50%, lending weight to Mr Abdul-

lah’s complaints. And the whole election

has anyway been overshadowed by Ameri-

ca’s continuing negotiations with the in-

surgents of the Taliban, which threaten to

turn Afghanistan’s already tumultuous

politics upside down.

This is not Afghanistan’s first disputed

election. Mr Abdullah claimed the previ-

ous vote, in 2014, was also rigged. He lost

then to Mr Ghani, too, and was only per-

suaded to abide by the result when Mr

Ghani agreed to create a special job for

him—chief executive—in a power-sharing

government. Their joint administration

was unhappy and the rivals are said barely

to speak. Mr Ghani explicitly and emphati-

cally ruled out any extension of the current

arrangement before the election.

Even if Mr Abdullah can be mollified,

Mr Ghani cannot claim much of a mandate.

Only about 10% of the voting-age popula-

tion actually turned out. That means a

mere 5% of adult Afghans plumped for

him. Voters were scared away from polling

stations by the risk of being murdered, and

disillusioned by the familiar choice.

KANDAHAR

A dispute over the presidential election

comes at a tricky time

Elections in Afghanistan

To the victor

the toils

H

ours beforeher wedding ceremony,

Aisha Sarwari, then a recent graduate

of an American university, was called into a

room full of men: her brother, her uncle, a

marriage registrar and her fiancé. The reg-

istrar asked three times if she consented to

marry the groom. She said yes. Then he told

her to sign a contract she had never seen,

with her name and a thumb-print. She said

yes to that, too. “It didn’t even occur to me

that I should look at the document,” she

says now. That document, known as a ni-

kah nama, is a marriage registration and a

pre-nuptial agreement all in one. It deter-

mines all sorts of things that may end up

being of critical importance to the bride, in

particular, from the way in which she may

seek a divorce to the division of property if

the marriage comes to an end.

Yet many wives-to-be in Pakistan sign

their nikah namaswithout reading them.

Plenty do not know what they are signing.

In Peshawar, a city in the north-west, near-

ly three-quarters of women, many of them

illiterate, say they were not consulted on

their marriage contracts. But asking for a

say in the drafting would be fraught, any-

way. At best, women who do will be ac-

cused of bad manners (for not trusting

their new husband) or of courting disaster

(because it is unlucky to talk of divorce be-

fore the marriage has even started). At

worst, it would be seen as inexcusable up-

pitiness that might put the wedding in

jeopardy. In some cases, marriage regis-

trars, who are often imams, take matters

into their own hands, simply crossing out

bride-friendly clauses on the contracts.

Even though such changes are illegal, an

analysis of about 14,000 nikah namasin

Punjab province found that 35% had been

amended in this way, according to Kate Vy-

borny, one of the researchers involved. “It’s

ludicrous,” says Ms Sarwari.

Yet when the nikah nama, an Islamic tra-

dition, was incorporated into Pakistani law

in 1961, the government’s intention was to

“secure to our female citizens the enjoy-

ment of their rights under Qur’anic laws”.

In fact, the ordinance in question did not

just enshrine Islamic practice in law; it mo-

dernised it, modestly circumscribing a

man’s rights and codifying those of wom-

en. Men are still free to marry up to four

women, but have to tell new wives about

existing ones. Men can still divorce at will,

but have to register the divorce in writing,

and so on. Husbands are also required to

state at the time of marriage, in the nikah

nama, whether they concede their wives

the same right they have, to end the mar-

riage whenever they want, without having

to go to court.

These rules are not as favourable to

women as those in many Muslim coun-

tries. Wives who have not obtained the

right to divorce at will can still seek one in

court but, by doing so, usually forfeit their

dowry, which they would normally be enti-

tled to keep in case of divorce as a form of

financial compensation. That is not the

case in Malaysia and Morocco. Nonethe-

less, the reforms were controversial from

the start. Boosters, such as Ayub Khan, the

president at the time, said they could “lib-

erate Islam from the debris of wrong super-

stition and prejudice”. Religious leaders

denounced them as unIslamic.

Nearly 60 years later, the tension still

festers. Feminists would like women to get

more of the family’s assets after a divorce.

But Zubair Abbasi of the Shaikh Ahmad

Hassan School of Law, in Lahore, doubts

that will happen. “This is such a sensitive

issue,” he says, “no political party wants to

take it on.” Instead, most activists are fo-

cusing on securing the freedoms already

on the books. Fauzia Viqar, former head of

the Punjab Commission on the Status of

Women, says there should be mandatory

training for marriage registrars, most of

whom, surveys suggest, have none. When

the commission helped sponsor a pilot

training scheme, they found it reduced the

illegal meddling with nikah namasby about

a third. There should also be a public-

awareness campaign aimed at both men

and women, Ms Viqar argues.

Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous prov-

ince, has already made it a criminal offence

for registrars to fill out the nikah namain-

correctly. But the bigger obstacle to secur-

ing brides’ rights may be cultural. Ms Sar-

wari was lucky. Her husband had given her

the right of unilateral divorce. The dowry

was generous. And the imam had not tam-

pered with the document. But her own rel-

atives had urged her husband not to be too

liberal, telling him: “Don’t give her any

ideas.” At the reception, an older female

guest yelled at her for being too chatty,

since the ideal bride is shy and demure.

Whatever the legal niceties, such en-

trenched expectations, Ms Sarwari says,

make it difficult for brides even to ask

about their rights. 7

How brides sign away their rights

Marriage in Pakistan

Clawless clauses

Can’t read the small print