Every cloud has a silver lining, so let’s first consider the plus side of the latest HDTV special Frontal Assault (brought to us by the girls of Hafsa, the theatrical company behind earlier super hits Chicks With Sticks and No Entry).

Worldwide headlines about violent Pakistani women are a definite change from worldwide headlines about violence against Pakistan women.

Plus side covered. Before we move on the negatives, a question about perception versus reality. Why do we tend to be surprised when the ‘fairer’, ‘weaker’, ‘more docile’ sex demonstrates aggressive physicality or an appetite for destruction? A sampling of ‘bad girls’ through the ages is presented below. Women rulers have not been included, though Indira, Golda and Margaret could probably teach all of us a thing or two about talking softly and carrying a big stick.

Salome, from the gospel of Mark in the New Testament, asked for the head of St. John the Baptist as payment for dancing at her stepfather’s banquet. In the 16th century Erzbeth Bathory, the ‘blood countess of Transylvania’, was imprisoned for life for the murder of scores of young women; she believed their freshly let blood was the best way to maintain her flawless skin. In the 1920’s Bonnie Parker accompanied her lover Clyde Barrow as he terrorized the central United States, robbing banks, stores, gas stations and killing several people. Lucretia Borgia, Lizzie Borden, Ma Baker, Phoolan Devi, women have been acting like people for a long time.

Closer to home, the last few decades have seen a surge in politically motivated violence committed by women. From Wikipedia:

The first known suicide attack by a woman was carried out in Lebanon on April 9, 1985. Sana’a Mouhadly, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), detonated an explosive-laden vehicle, which killed two Israeli soldiers and injured two more. Since then, female suicide bombers have been employed in several conflicts, by a variety of organizations, against both military and civilian targets:

Women of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers, have perpetrated 30–40% of the organization’s suicide bombings, which number more than 200. Thenmuli Rajaratnam (also known as Dhanu), who assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, is the best-known of these bombers.
The Chechen shahidkas have attacked Russian troops in Chechnya and Russian civilians elsewhere, e.g. in the Moscow theater hostage crisis.

During the Lebanese Civil War, female SSNP members bombed Israeli troops, militias such as the South Lebanon Army, and Lebanese civilians.

In the Al-Aqsa Intifada, women of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas have bombed Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Members of the Iraqi insurgency have set off suicide bombs.

Women of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have carried out suicide bombings primarily against Turkish Armed Forces, in some cases strapping explosives to their abdomen in order to simulate pregnancy.


Female militants are currently being hunted by police in the Phillipines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other countries, and crime libraries in the west feature multiple entires about murderous female criminals. In stories about Chechnya, the hijabi protagonists are called ‘black widows’ (like the spider, silent and deadly), as were serial killers Rhonda Bell Martin and Diana Lumbrera.

But those are extreme cases. The students of the Jamia Hafsa have so far initmidated simply through the threat of violence, but that is a slippery slope. What will happen if and when their bluff is called?

We also have non political violence, such as the movement by women in the Indian state of Bihar to ‘demolish liquor vends and toddy pots’. Fed up with the constant drunkenness of their menfolk, they beat them, shaved their heads, garlanded them with shoes and paraded them around their villages (BBC news story in 2006) till they vowed to give up alcohol. Their efforts have resulted in swathes of dry land in generally wet India.

And somewhere in between there are Muammar Gadaffi’s female Rambos; the all female troop of ‘crack’ bodyguards who accompany him everywhere, ensuring Gadaffi a multitude of photops wherever he goes. And lest you think they be only his eye (and according to some reports also arm) candy, one died while shielding him from a bullet during an ambush in Libya in 1998.

Interestingly, the identity of the individual female militants is generally subsumed by the cause which they avowedly serve. Mullah this and Commander that, General this and Tiger that, men who have turned to violence to serve their political ends are humanized through extensive reportage, their birth, upbringing, education, friends sifted through to flesh out news stories and documentaries about their exploits. Female militants are not given this privilege. With the exception of Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled, Phoolan Devi, and Gadaffi’s bodyguards, all of whom happen to be rather attractive, the female militant is still seen as a puppet in the hands of her male masters.

But the need for substantive psychological profiling is probably not what is stopping our government from acting against the students and teachers of the Jamia Hafsa. The question is, what is? Is there a connection to be made between the CJ fiasco, the mayhem in the NWFP and the purdah falling on Islamabad? Is there a strategy of self preservation on the part of vested interests unfolding, invisible and indecipherable to the average Pakistani? If there must be a state within a state, why can’t it be a state of grace?

Whether ‘Aunty Shamim’ is a madam or not, nobody has the right to dispense vigilante justice or impose their beliefs on others. The federal government needs to be more forthright on exactly why it has been following a policy of appeasement. Who or what is it trying to protect by condoning fascistic displays while simultaneously proving, through lathi charges against peaceful, secular, non segregated demonstrators protesting far larger injustices, that it has the will and the means to crack down on perceived transgressions? Mohammed Masood ki to shalwar utar di, asli daishatgardon say purdah uthanay main koi masla nahin hona chahiyay.

The kidnapping of civilians and policemen by the students and teachers of the madrassas associated with the Lal Masjid, as well as recent events in Tank (NWFP) is evidence of a real, escalating and dangerous movement within the ranks of the religious right that cuts right across gender lines. The crackdown on it should cut across gender lines too. This ‘talibanisation’, as both local and foreign periodicals have been calling it, is fuelled rather than deterred by the inaction of our LEA’s. In the case of the occupation of the children’s library by Hafsa students’ months ago, the government actually capitulated to the demands of the female militants that the mosque in question be rebuilt. With enemies like these, the gun toting gundis (if it wasn’t a word before, it is now) must have been thinking as a government minister laid the foundation stone for the new mosque, who needs friends?

It is hence not surprising that the same people feel they can up the ante with impunity. They will continue to do so until ordinary Pakistanis put down their remotes, stand, be counted, and demand of their self proclaimed leaders that infringements on their civil rights by non state as well as state actors be rapidly and ruthlessly curtailed. If they are not dealt with in a decisive manner now, it is only a matter of time before they try hoisting their own flag on parliament house. And it probably won’t be a Pakistani flag. Not unless someone added a camel to it when we weren’t looking.