i An Ethnographic Investigation of Swara among the Pashtun People of Jalalabad, Afghanistan

219 Pages·2016·1.2 MB·English

by  Masood Khan

i

An Ethnographic Investigation of Swara among the Pashtun People of Jalalabad, Afghanistan:
Exploring Swara as a Conflict Settlement Mechanism from the Perspective of Men

By
Masood Khan

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of
The University of Manitoba
in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Anthropology
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg

Copyright © 2016 by Masood Khan
ii

Abstract
This thesis presents an ethnographic analysis of the practice of swara marriage among the
Pashtun people of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, based on nine weeks of fieldwork in 2015. Swara is a
form of compensation marriage practiced by Pashtun people in Pakistan and Afghanistan through
which disputes between men are resolved through the giving away in marriage of girls, often
minors, by guilty parties to victim parties. By employing practice theory and the theory of
sacrifice, swara marriages are analyzed through the conceptualizations of honor, revenge, and
ghairat (“bravery”). Focusing on six swara cases, the first half of the thesis explores the
concepts of honor, revenge, and ghairat during the time of feuds. The second half of the thesis
directly focuses on swara marriages and analyzes them through the concepts of symbolic capital
and sacrifice.
iii

Acknowledgements
Though only my name appears on the cover of this thesis, it is the product of efforts of many
people.

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincerest and deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr.
Ellen Judd. Her guidance and mentorship have been invaluable not only throughout this thesis
project, but also over the past three years of my graduate program. Her interest in my thesis
project, along with her dedication, has been remarkable as this thesis came to completion. She
provided valuable insights and feedback on the drafts of the chapters. I am grateful to her for
allowing me to work as her research assistant throughout my graduate program and for generous
support for me through GETS and GPE funding. I could never thank her enough for everything
she did for me. Thank you, Dr. Judd, for being an amazing advisor, mentor, scholar, and human
being!

I would also like to thank my thesis committee members, Dr. Anna Fournier and Dr. Maureen
Flaherty, for their patience and insightful comments. It was a pleasure to have them on my
committee.

My special thanks to all the men who participated in this research project. I owe sincere gratitude
to Muqeem Shah for his help in the recruitment process and for making my stay in Jalalabad a
memory to cherish. I would also like to thank Qari Saib and Hakeen Saib for their support
during my stay in Jalalabad.

In the Department of Anthropology, I would like to thank Dr. Kathleen Buddle-Crowe and Dr.
Kent Fowler for their generous support for my research project through the Anthropology Thesis
Write-up Award and Anthropology Graduate Research Award. I would also like to thank Colleen
Loewen and Narmatha Nadarajah for helping me navigate the reams of bureaucracies.

I would also to thank my friends, Aman, Mubasim, Shah, Shaharyar, and Zohaib for their
wonderful support and encouragement. They have been kind enough to put up with me on both
the good days and the bad, and for that, they receive my sincere appreciation.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love and support. Without their continuous
support and love, I would not have been able to pursue my education. To my parents, brother,
and sisters, I owe it all to you and I love!
iv

Dedication
To all the women who suffer silently and endure patiently
v

Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................ iii
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………..iv

Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... v
Chapter 1- Introduction: Statement of the Research Questions and Theoretical Framework
......................................................................................................................................................... 1
Research Objective and Research Questions .............................................................................. 2
Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................... 5
Organization of Thesis .............................................................................................................. 15
Chapter 2- Background and Literature Review ...................................................................... 16
Kinship and Marriage ................................................................................................................ 17
Jirga .......................................................................................................................................... 25
Conflict Resolution and Gender ................................................................................................ 28
Swara ......................................................................................................................................... 30
Impact of War on Women‘s Rights in Afghanistan .................................................................. 36
Chapter 3- Research Methodology ............................................................................................ 39
Informants and Sampling .......................................................................................................... 39
Interviews .................................................................................................................................. 43
Ethical Consideration ................................................................................................................ 49
Brief Overview of the Studied Cases ........................................................................................ 50
Case 1 ........................................................................................................................................ 50
Case 2 ........................................................................................................................................ 51
Case 3 ........................................................................................................................................ 52
Case 4 ........................................................................................................................................ 52
Case 5 ........................................................................................................................................ 53
Case 6 ........................................................................................................................................ 54
Chapter 4- Pashtunwali and Namos (Honor) ........................................................................... 56
The Concept of Pashtunwali ..................................................................................................... 56
Key Guiding Principles of Pashtunwali .................................................................................... 60
Honor ......................................................................................................................................... 60
vi

Manifestation of Honor in Feuds and in their Settlement Process ............................................ 65
The Concepts of Korenai and Qaum ......................................................................................... 67
Honor as a ―Positive‖ Negotiation Tool in Feuds ..................................................................... 69
Fighting as a Disgrace, Dispute Settlement as an Honorable Act ............................................. 76
Chapter 5- The Concepts of Badal (revenge) and Ghairat (“bravery”) and Their
Implications for Feuds ................................................................................................................ 85
Revenge ..................................................................................................................................... 85
Ghairat ...................................................................................................................................... 87
Ghairat as Physical Bravery and as a Public Act...................................................................... 88
Implications of the Public Performance Aspect of Ghairat for Inter-lineage and Intra-lineage
Feuds ......................................................................................................................................... 94
Ghairat in Relation to Women .................................................................................................. 97
Revenge as Deterrent to the Longivity of Feuds, and its Role in Fear of External Interference
................................................................................................................................................... 99
Delaying Seeking Revenge ..................................................................................................... 105
Chapter 6- Swara....................................................................................................................... 109
Financial Costs of Feuds and Swara ....................................................................................... 109
Symbolic Receipt of Girls Given Swara ................................................................................. 122
Symbolic Capital, Social Status and Swara ............................................................................ 130
Paighor and Swara…………………………………………………………………………………….151

Swara as an Act of Sacrifice………………………………..……………………………...…163

Chapter 7- Summary and Conclusion..................................................................................... 172
References Cited........................................................................................................................ 184
Appendix A- Kinship Diagrams .............................................................................................. 194
Appendix B- Consent Forms ................................................................................................... 201
vii

List of Tables

6.1 Age of girls given in swara and delay in their marriage ………………………......……129
1

Chapter 1
Introduction: Statement of the Research Questions and Theoretical Framework
In summer of 2012, I had the opportunity to work as an intern with a local Afghan NGO,
Afghan Development Association (ADA). Being interested in women‘s issues, I was particularly
interested to work for its project, ―Peace Building, Conflict Resolution and Gender,‖ which
aimed at establishing women peace committees, women‘s jirgas, in the rural areas of Jalalabad.
While the project did not succeed in achieving its stated goal, it gave me hands-on experience of
a number of women‘s issues of which I was unaware before. During my internship, I got to know
the extent to which violence against women persisted in the community. Although violence
against women was present both in public and private spheres, it was hard to talk about it in
public because of it being treated as a ―family matter.‖ It was primarily for this reason that the
establishment of women‘s peace committees were successfully resisted by the men who did not
want the women to take on what they called the ―men‘s job.‖ It was during this internship that I
witnessed a swara marriage, a form of compensation marriage through which disputes1 between
men are resolved through the giving away of girls, often minors, in marriage by guilty parties to
victim parties. Although I already knew about the practice of swara, I had never witnessed it
before. The only source of information about swara that I had was from the local men working in
the ADA office. However, it was not until I went back home in Pakistan after my internship that
I discovered that a distant female family member of mine had also had a swara marriage about
forty to fifty years ago. I was able to gather some more information about swara from my male
family members, but did not have the opportunity to talk to the woman in my family who was
given in swara or to any of her male family members.

1 The terms ―dispute,‖ ―conflict,‖ and ―feud‖ have been used interchangeably throughout the
thesis.
2

Having been able to gain a general understanding of the practice of swara from men‘s
perspective, I always wanted to know how women who have been given in swara experience this
practice, and how it affects their lives. The master‘s thesis was an opportunity for me to explore
this curiosity. Initially, this thesis was supposed to be women-centric, something which both my
advisor and I wished to do. But As much as I, or anyone for this matter, would have wanted to
include women in the research, women‘s inclusion would have presented myriad practical and
ethical issues both for participants and for myself. Given the cultural sensitivities surrounding
interaction between women and unrelated men, getting access to women, especially those who
experienced swara, is practically impossible for a male researcher in the research site. Even if
access to women is attained, ethics problems emerge which are even more challenging to be
addressed effectively. Of ethics problems associated with the inclusion of women as research
participants, safety and confidentiality of female participants was of paramount importance,
which required rigorous efforts to be ensured. Also, the inclusion of women could potentially
jeopardize the overall research project by posing risks to the participation of men. Thus
acknowledging the limitations and challenges associated with the inclusion of women, the
research project did not include any women. This not only helped avoid ethical problems
associated with the inclusion of women as research participants, but also paved the way for
conducting the research project in a safe environment.
Research Objective and Research Questions
This shift in research participants also shifted the overall research objective from seeking to
understand how swara is experienced by women and how it affects them, to how swara is
enacted by men, and how it serves their interests. In a broader sense, this research explores the
practice of swara from the perspective of men among the Pashtun people living in the rural areas
3

of Jalalabad. Within this, the objective is to investigate gendered implications of swara
particularly for men, and for women to the extent possible. The exploration of swara as a
settlement mechanism in land disputes particularly requires attention to men‘s perspectives
because the precursor of swara (land disputes in the case of this research) and decisions on
swara are solely men‘s avenues of authority. In this way, the focus on men provided a useful
window into understanding not only how the practice of swara enables men to resolve the
disputes among themselves but also how it allows them to maintain their dominance over
women. In order to achieve the stated research objective, this research sought to explore the
practice of swara through the lens of Bourdieu‘s (1977) practice theory informed by a gender
approach to it. As a result, the ―official model‖ of swara and the ―practical strategies‖ of men
involved in swara were investigated to understand how the practice of swara is appropriated in
different ways by men that serve their interests in a given context. The broader research objective
was sought to achieve through research questions aimed at exploring the practical strategies of
men in the feuds and their settlement in the selected swara cases. The research started out with
the following wide-ranging research questions, as expressed in the thesis proposal:
 How is swara practiced in terms of its official objective of conflict resolution?
 What are the diverse gendered implications of resolving a conflict between men through
transfer of one or more women?
 How do diversely positioned people deploy strategies to appropriate swara according to
different situations?
 To what extent and how are conflicts in Pashtun society resolved through swara?
 What role do diversely positioned men play in conflict resolution?