Shad Begum

Dir, Pakistan

What is the one word that describes you? Courageous

Shad Begum is a courageous woman. She has faced opposition from all major political parties in Pakistan and has remained unflinching in the face of countless threats to her life and property upon her insistence for her rights as a woman councilor. Since 2001, she has single-handedly changed the political context of local government for women in the district of Dir in Pakistan.

Shad Begum is a social worker and attorney. She also founded the fist women's NGO in Dir. This honour is an inheritance from her father who started an NGO by the name of Idara-e-Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK) in the 1970s. The area was very backward. People objected to women's equality. So IKK members brought their own family women to become IKK members. There were stronger objections on this mixing of the sexes in the area. So a separate wing for women was created under the umbrella of Anjuman Behbood-e-Khwateen (ABKT) which as registered with social welfare department under the 1961 Act. This was the first registered NGO of women in District Dir until 1998.

Shad Begum was born in Ziarat Talash village near Chakdara in district Dir in 1974. She studied in the Government High School in her village and did Metrics as a regular candidate and completed rest of her education as a private candidate to earn her BA and degrees. Her father is an allopathic doctor and hails from the Khatak tribe and her mother is a teacher in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School. Shad has five brothers and one sister.

From 1994-97, the ABKT mostly worked with a welfare orientation. With increasing linkages with civil society, this led to a development shift for the organization that now started working with groups of women instead of individuals. Many donors such as TVO, SAP-PK, CRS, NATPOW, Asia Foundation and CHIP (Civil Society Human Institutional Development Program) supported her activities. The ABKT worked on micro credit, primary education for girls, health services and education and on women's capacity-building.

She married in 1999 and has two sons with her husband, Jan Muhammad.

When local government elections were announced in 2001 under the local Government Ordinance, she was a mature development worker. The ABKT health projects were spread all over the district and she had networking groups of women in the area. However, she was not interested in contesting the elections as she thought it better to help other women from her area build capacity for contesting election.

There were vocal objections that she was asking other families to field their women in election while she was herself not doing the same. Also, several political parties including JI, JUI, PPP (P), PML (Q), PML (N), and ANP all had evolved an electoral consensus that no women will contest or vote in the elections from District Dir. This reflected the fundamentalist bent of the area which has been one of the least developed in Pakistan.

Dir is a mountainous terrain. Most of the population lives in a poor rural area. The district has few basic services of health, education, income generation and employment. There is very little education and only one degree college in all of the district for girls.

On average, there is one girls' high school for every 100 villages, thus most girls get to study only to the primary level.

There are only two lady doctors in the DHQ, and there is no lady doctor in Rural Health Centers.

There are only 150,000 registered female voters in the district which has a population of over on million. Most people do not even have ID cards.

Agriculture and forests are the main sources of income and livelihood for people. Fruits are delicious as Dir grows some of the best oranges in the world.

No one was allowed to submit papers for women to run as candidates in the elections. There was a open ultimatum in the area that any man who came to deposit papers for women candidates would be killed. The ABKT and other local organizations protested and sought protection of the state. In all of district Dir, only six union council members filed papers from Chakdar who were all elected unopposed. There were no other papers filed from anywhere else. No women dared run for election.

However, in the second round for the Tehsil and District elections, the parties revoked their ban on women candidates as otherwise they could not have a quorum for the District and Tehsil Assemblies. The political parties in the area fielded mostly older women from their own households to fulfill the formality for elections.

Shad Begum contested the elections to run for a general councilor seat as an independent candidate. She was even refused support by her own party Jamat-e-Islamai.

Sultanat Yar of the JI was elected Nazim of the Tehsil Assembly. There were even oaths taken on the Quran that they would not vote for this girl.

The Jamat-e-Islami said they may have women represent in their provincial assemblies but the particular situation of Dir compelled them that they do not allow women.

There were open statements in the press against her and she was declared an agent of the foreign interests as well as a Jewish agent.

However, she still received 34 votes which were the maximum secured by any women in her Tehsil! Shad writes, "I was so relieved that people did not believe the propaganda against me and ignored all the character assassination was subjected to!"

It is important to note that the Local Government Ordinance 2001 requires a simple majority to pass resolutions in the house, effectively facilitating the exclusion of women from the decision making process. Shad Begum wants the law to be amended suitably to make sure that women participate in all decisions undertaken. The higher ups never bothered to respond to her despite numerous written requests from her.

Shad would write resolutions and send them to men participating in the decision-making meetings. These messages were sent through an old man who brought the men tea. The messages were never discussed in the house or reflected in the meeting but they would later get their women relatives to sign the proceedings, if needed.

In the educational committee, there were all men who would visit the girl schools. Shad Begum objected and sent in a written application which was endorsed by other women councilors. The application asked how it was compatible with Islam that men were visiting girl schools. However, the resolution was never discussed in the house and was reportedly thrown away. The provincial government also backed the fundamentalists in Dir and nothing moved against them.

Shad Begum, however, attended every meeting and there was no meeting of the District Assembly in the last eight months of her tenure. In the 2005 elections, the eight main parties again had the same consensus not to field any women candidates. Shad mobilized the civil society against this illegal political action and moved a writ petition with the election commission that these political parties were violating laws by taking collaborative stands. None of the parties took back their consensus but all DID field women candidates on the last day due to the efforts of Shad Begum.

Her work in the first tenure strengthened the standing of the ABKT in the local political arena enough that the organization established a legal aid camp in front of the election commission office in Dir to facilitate women councilors in their paper submissions. Some 144 women political candidates submitted their papers through the ABKT camp. When the political parties realized the threat to them in the Tehsil and District Assembly elections, they also fielded their own candidates. Once again older women from their households were the ones selected by the local politicians.

In all of district Dir, a total of 94 women votes were polled. Parties actually deployed their trained goons to threaten women who came to vote. This was a well-publicized strategy so families would not send their women out to vote.

Also, the polling booths for men and women were not separated. The female electoral staff was also told not to come as their remuneration would still be paid to them. This was in sharp contrast to the electoral arrangements for men who were given transport and refreshments but women were actively barred from participating in the election. There were fatwa's in the mosques by the religious imams to marry any women from the NGO they find trying to vote in the elections!

I often request that the authorities allow women to run for office, and I have survived because I respect the traditions of our area. By violating or idsrupting traditions, nothing is gained and only illogical violence is started.

And yet parties play politics in the name of Islam. They have taken a fundamentalist position on the promise that they will usher in an Islamic system. So if they change their position they stand to lose their political following in the area.

Still, Shad Begum contested elections for a seat in the district assembly. All the political parties wanted her to join their panel. The JI offered her a ticket which she accepted. She won with the support of Jamat-e-Islami. In fact, all women councilors were elected unopposed as political parties had come to an understanding amongst themselves.

Jamat-e-Islami (JI) and the Pakistan People's Party (Parliamentarian's) are now the two major groups. Muhammad Rasool Khan of the JI and Ahmad Hassan Khan of the PPP had a draw for the seat of district Nazim.

The deadlock could not be broken when Inayat-ul-allah of the PPP contested against JI's Sultani Mulk for Interim Nazim. There have only been two meetings one for oath taking and one for the election of the interim Nazim. This created a deadlock and the district assembly still has to begin its work. However, there is some improvement in the situation as the district assembly now only has a partition separating men and women instead of seating them in altogether different rooms.

"We can listen to the proceeding but cannot see or say anything because the women's section has no mike!", laughs Shad Begum, "And I still have to debate my ideological position on women's participation within the Jamat-e-Islami despite having won on their nomination", smiles Shad Begum.

None of the women councilors' problems have been solved by them winning the elections. The assembly was bogged down by the fundamentalist insistence that women are not to be allowed to vote or be elected.

Propaganda maligned her reputation that this girl wanted to be with men. Women are seated in a separate room and never allowed to join the men in a meeting. "Women told me that their men have instructed them not to talk to this girl," Shad Begum tells.

The only time women were considered for allocation of development funds was when the men members decided to give them sewing machines. One day two men came to the women's room.

They were told that the house approved 200,000 rupees with which they could buy sewing machines so that the women councilors could start craft centers close to their homes.

Shad Begum objected to his unilateral decision but was told point blank that women do not understand politics or society. She refused to take sewing machines. "The machines were forcibly given to women at their homes and many craft centers were started but all were closed down within six months", she tells.

Shad's role in the Tehsil Assembly did ignite debate on women issues in Dir. She continued to highlight thee issues in the national press and in seminars and workshop in Islamabad so that pressure would be brought on the local politicians to change. Her actions kept the issue of women's rights alive as a key issue in the local politics of Dir. "At least the seed of change has been sown. People may not agree but they have started to debate the issue. In time this will lead to positive changes in our society", declares Shad Begum.

Change takes time. Women were not allowed to vote in 2001. By the year 2005, 127 women were elected at the union council Tehsil and district level! This is a big change inside four years.

Some 26 women supported by the ABKT won their elections for various UCs in the district despite the fact that the total women who came to caste their votes were only 94. "Men voted for women in the election. This is a big change. The main motivation was the pursuit of majority in the Tehsil and District Assemblies" says Shad Begum.

Women councilors do not understand the system. Shad works to build their understanding so that women are armed with knowledge. She is now a Lead Mentor with the Women's Political School. Shad Begum also joined PATTAN in 2005 as a Master Trainer in district Dir where she has been working with PATTAN to launch the Women Councilors Network. However, she feels that there should be more than training to support the process of women's political capacity-building. "Training alone is not enough. What will they do with that training if they do not have a market for it?", she asks. She holds that NGOs must play active roles in making new opportunities available to the women councilors.

Our people are not exposed to the world. The literacy ratio is low and very few people are educated. They tend to believe the hearsay that the politicians - especially those from the religious parties - feed them. However, things are changing and I hope that with the passage of time, they will see for themselves that there can be no development without according rights to their women.

Shad Begum