(no subject)

[eirias]

The BBC reports on "Pakistan's groundbreaking transvestite."

Pretty hard to believe this is the same country where, not so long ago, a tribal council sentenced a woman to be gang raped in retaliation for the unproven crimes of her brother.

Comments

[nonnihil.livejournal.com]

The thing about Pakistan is that the urban and rural parts are nearly separate countries. The government granted almost unlimited autonomy to rural village councils in order to keep the peace, going so far as to entirely eliminate the tier of government binding local councils to the National Assembly. So outside of the cities the law and culture are entirely different. Indeed, in two of Pakistan's regions the government is fighting active wars from time to time against the local governments.

So no, it's not really the same country. It's inside the same lines on the map, but that's about it.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

The government granted almost unlimited autonomy to rural village councils in order to keep the peace, going so far as to entirely eliminate the tier of government binding local councils to the National Assembly. So outside of the cities the law and culture are entirely different.

That's really interesting -- I mean, I knew that there was some rural/urban divide, and I knew that it explained the time-warpish feeling I get from juxtapositions like the one in my post; but I didn't know that the divide had such formal force.

Are there other nations that have situations like this? What exactly are the laws on native reservations in the USA? (It's perhaps stupid that I don't know, since there are some not far from where I live...) Or the Sami in northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway? Anyone know?

[cos]

This is a different situation from the ones you're thinking of in western countries, where everything is clearly defined by law and people accept the jurisdiction of the same courts to judge that law.

Pakistan's borders are artificial, and something like half the country is actually part of Afghanistan (but then, Afghanistan has a part of what used to be Persia...). Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, has had an active separatist movement for a long time, and has occasionally risen up in mass revolt.

Much of Pakistan was never really incorporated into the country to begin with. The tribal lands had a long history of independence and rule by tribal councils, and when the British drew a boundary around them and a bunch of Indians said "you're in our country now" they basically said "huh? what? who're you?" The basic agreement that worked out with most of these tribal areas is that they ceded control of the international border to the Pakistani government, and the Pakistani government agreed to leave them alone otherwise. Of course that's no way to run a modern country, so decades later the government started trying to actually govern these provinces, a process that moves in fits and starts. Part of the problem of defining the state of separation is that it keeps changing, and the status quo isn't satisfying everyone.

This particular incident, however, happened in the Punjab, which is the most authentically "Pakistani" of Pakistan's parts. In the Punjab, Pakistan is not seen as a foreign country (the way it is in much of Sindh, Balochistan, and NWFP), and it is generally accepted that the national government's entities have authority over the locals. But the actual excercise of that authority isn't well developed in rural areas.

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

Punjab is also a state in India - is there an Indian Punjab and a Pakistani Punjab, then? And are they culturally similar?