Daily Times

In Pakistan, the Girl Child constantly finds herself battling the forces that would wage war on her. All of which seek the same thing: to rob her of a childhood.

The hurly burly macho men of the Taliban tell her that she can’t go to school. And if she doesn’t listen they will bomb the living daylights out of wherever she happens to be. Or if they are feeling particularly brave they will shoot her in the head at point-blank range, the way only big boys can.

Even that swaggering self-declared enemy of such militant patriarchy – the United States – isn’t averse to hitting the Pakistan Girl Child. Time after time. But, since the mirror on the wall tells him he is the manliest of them all, careful is he always never to leave fingerprints on her shattered body. Yet he feels not much guilt. After all, he is doing all this for her own good. And she would see that, if only she had the chance to grow up. But what is a poor old mother bomber to do? Especially as he and his cohorts have long tried to pinpoint who stands where on the line that we sketched between Good and Bad Taliban. Truth be told, even we are not so sure anymore. All we know is that robbing the Pakistan Girl Child of her fundamental right to education has never been a deal-breaker. So very moderately enlightened are we.

Yet the upcoming year offers her some hope. For the UN has taken note of how the Girl Child around the world is suffering from the recent escalation of conflicts. And it is true that wars waged and societies decimated by the US and NATO war machines that we have seen from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria, to Somalia to Yemen have turned the Girl Child into a refugee. Or as the West prefers to call her: an economic migrant. Those who don’t manage to flee are left to face the bullets and bombs of what the western media still insists on calling ‘civil wars’. Thus has the world body announced that its focus for the upcoming year will be on spurring global attention and action to the immense challenges facing the Girl Child before, during and after crisis.

Sadly, this will mean little for the Pakistan Girl Child, regardless of whether or not we think the UN lacks sufficient bite to ensure its Charter is upheld by member states.

Not when the Pakistani state itself continues its war of aggression against her. More than half of the country’s children who ought to attend school but don’t are girls. Thus she sees not much difference between a democratic political set-up at the Centre and the hurly burly Taliban. Except that the latter is not a state actor violating its constitutional obligations as well as international commitments. Just because a regime doesn’t take up arms to deny the Pakistan Girl Child her inalienable right to an education doesn’t make it any less culpable.

Indeed, she sees little point in the so-called democratic model. For she cannot forget her shock and dread at the way in which her country’s parliamentarians celebrated the International Day of the Girl in their own customary way. Despite their lip service to the UN vision – Pakistani lawmakers refused to pass the Child Marriage Restraint (Amendment) Bill 2017. This, of course, was aimed at increasing the legal age of marriage for girls from 16 to 18. The horror. Those in the upper House said not only was such a move not cricket – it was positively un-Islamic. They knew this because the good scholarly men of religious academia had told them so. Well, then. What more is to be said? Why pretend to have a representative parliamentary democratic system when all this does is concede more and more breathing space to the religious right? In this way, the suited and non-booted men that sit at the helm are doing far more to mainstream a certain right-wing agenda than even the uniformed puppet masters that are said to be in charge of string-pulling behind- the-scenes.

What the Pakistan Girl Child dreams of more than anything is the right to life; the right to childhood; the right to security; the right to be more than just a statistic. Yet for her, the light is dimming and the dream is too.

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei

Published in Daily Times, October 21^st 2017.