The Flogging Video – Moon of Alabama

April 5, 2009

The Flogging Video

In February I wrote about Pressure on Zardari:

[Zardari's] recent peace offer to opposition fighters in Swat was a smart move. But in the 'west' it was immediately criticized and he will now be pressured to continue the fighting there.
…
The fighting over a local justice system has continued since the early 1990s and has little to do with the Taliban issues in Afghanistan. A compromise in Swat could actually help to take away support from Wahabbi/Deobandi hardliners that are at the core of the Taliban. Pressure on Zardari on this issue can only increase the strife in Pakistan and speed up his downfall.

Even without 'western' interference a compromise as now in negotiation will not be easy to achieve as there are already many other possible spoilers.

One spoiler has now appeared in form of a cellphone video that shows the flogging of a women.

Video of Taliban flogging girl stirs anger in Pakistan
Flogging video shakes Pakistan peace accord

Pak President Zardari Condemns Flogging of Teenage Girl, Orders Inquiry

The cellphone video of the flogging will be used to step back from the compromise deal and that move may well reignite fighting in Swat.

The short cellphone video is part of this Channel 4 report:

As you can see men get flogged too for 'moral crimes'. The flogging in both shown cases is rather symbolic through at least two layers of cloth and without much pain. The whole flagellation punishment in this form seems to be more about inducing shame then inducing pain.

The genuineness of the video is denied by the Taliban and there is only one person who claims to have witnessed this.

The cellphone video will put pressure on Zardari to turn away from the deal that reintroduced a local justice system in Swat and to thereby restart the fighting with the locals just as the U.S. would like him to do.

Which makes me wonder a bit about the timing of the videos emergence.

Posted by b on April 5, 2009 at 15:49 UTC | Permalink

Comments

I guess I’m in a snippy mood but I could think of a few adult children in my country that could use a good spanking…
This get into one of those areas of; should we force our values upon others? Spanking folks for moral crimes seems rather dated to those of us in the west, but what can they think of our moral values when 12 year-old girls dress like whores? Whose culture is suffering more?
I’ve grown-up under american justice, I somewhat understand the laws and values of my culture, so for me I can get along with it, regardless of its corruption. Same for some person under Shira Law… they should know where the rules can be bent and where they can’t.
We’re often shown these flogging videos and all the evils of other cultures, but we usually can’t even begin to know the true story of why someone ended-up on the wrong end of a switch… And our own criminal justice system is far from just, so is it really a good idea to try and sell our broken system to someone else?
Imagine the money we could raise by auctioning off each swat to be applied to Madoff’s backside, publicly on the steps of the NY Fed building…

Posted by: DavidS | Apr 5 2009 17:06 utc | 1

I’m not sure I get your point. Should I not think that this looks a lot like fascism bringing moral order to people? Why can’t I be against the US occupations, the corrupt Pakistani government, and the religious rednecks at the same time?

Posted by: biklett | Apr 5 2009 17:06 utc | 2

i think one point is quite clear – is to understan what ‘punishment’ is inflicted throughout the world. as david points out the west is hardly in a position to judge punishment as they practice unthinkable punishements every day of their existence. the most incarcerated poeple in the world in the united states know a thing or two about the unjustness & the indignity of punishment
this is neiher to excuse or to justify – but i have been the witness to many punishement on a number of continents & there is no high ground here. power creates monsters. monsters inflict punishment

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 5 2009 17:18 utc | 3

@biklett – Why can’t I be against the US occupations, the corrupt Pakistani government, and the religious rednecks at the same time?
Sure you can and I join you in it. My point is that these are not necessarily religious nuts.
I linked to this paper (pdf) in the older post. It is written by a history professor and touches a lot on the legal system in Swat.
The ‘secular’ one pushed down from the central government is
a. unworkable
b. corrupt and
c. against all local tradition.
The (mild) form of Sharia practiced traditionally in Swat is simply what the locals want (see the private school teacher in the video). It has much less to do with religion or religious nuts than with need for jurisprudence in daily life. Deciding who is guilty in a car crash and has to pay for the damage will take a ‘regular’ Pakistani court month if not years and the decision will depend on who gives the biggest bribe. A sharia based court may solve the case in a day.
We in the ‘west’ tend to ignore that Islam is as much a legal system as it is a religion.
If someone on the tubes says ‘they want an Islamic state’ westerners think that the folks demand a theocracy. But what the folks in most cases really demand is a certain legal system – either because they lack one or because the one they have is perceived as unjust.

Posted by: b | Apr 5 2009 18:15 utc | 4

remembereringgiap-thanks, that was the point I was making.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Jesus

Posted by: DavidS | Apr 5 2009 18:33 utc | 5

Abuse of women and anyone’s “security” are most definitely not either/or issues. Anyone who hints otherwise needs to be hauled out for public ridicule and dismissal.

Posted by: vachon | Apr 5 2009 22:03 utc | 6

above all, intended to humiliate her, break her spirit & teach other women a lesson.
same principle as Gitmo & Abu Graib, just a different setting.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Apr 5 2009 23:40 utc | 7

I’ve only seen US right-wing sites play that tape, commenting with a non sequitur something like, ‘get ready, the Dems want international law [+ word salad conflating international law with Sharia law with the UDHR with the IMF with world currency]’ so that this, like most everything that happens, gets swept into a freefloating foreign-domination hysteria, which will be unleashed in the event of overseas war-crimes indictments.

Posted by: …—… | Apr 6 2009 1:16 utc | 8

rgiap 3 Our cops sat on the chest of a shoplifter when they tasered him, after the grocery store called the cops and the guy stuck around! He died at the scene over a loaf . of . bread. I’d have been miles away before the cops showed up to book me.
Killed a hungry guy over a loaf of fucking bread. Sat on his chest until his ribs cracked and his heart stopped. John Laws are Fascists. Cockroaches. In my day, we shot gangsters, not unemployed. In my day, we let the homeless sleep in a jail cell overnight during the winter, and gave them a peanut butter sandwich to eat next day.
In my day we had a sheriff and a couple of deputies, not a $10M SWAT commando team.
All those $100B’s swindled by DHS to buy the latest military equipment for the
local cop shops, why is the DHS budget $10B’s? How many search and rescue high speed boats can you buy for one police force to sit unused in the warehouse for all the crap they bought with our tax dollars now gone to some Israeli death dealer.

Posted by: Elliot Ness | Apr 6 2009 6:17 utc | 9

This is, unfortunateli, a cultural value in the region. Why satanizing Taliban?

Posted by: MSVentura | Apr 6 2009 7:35 utc | 10

As soon as the Taliban finishes flogging their teenage girl into submission, our military forces will step in and finish them off by bombing them to death!

Posted by: Cynthia | Apr 6 2009 13:50 utc | 11

oops — I meant girls, not girl.

Posted by: Cynthia | Apr 6 2009 13:59 utc | 12

Do they read MoA in Peshawar?
Just in: Swat girl denies flogging by Taliban

PESHAWAR: Chand Bibi, the young girl who was shown being flogged by the Swat Taliban in a videotape aired on television channels, gave a statement to a Qazi, or judge, on Sunday, denying the incident.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the NWFP information minister, told our sources that she made the statement to Mohammad Riaz, the judge of the Qazi Court for Matta Tehsil, and the commissioner of Malakand division, Syed Mohammad Javed, both of whom visited her village, Kala Killay, in Kabal Swat district on Sunday.
Quoting the commissioner, Mian Iftikhar said the girl, Chand Bibi, made it clear that she was indeed married to Adalat Khan and everyone in the village knew about it. She refuted the reports that both of them were flogged by the Taliban as punishment for maintaining illicit relations and then forcibly married.
…
Mian Iftikhar said the judge, Mohammad Riaz, also recorded the statement of Adalat Khan and he also denied the reports that he or his wife, Chand Bibi, had been lashed by the Taliban. “Adalat Khan wondered as to why nobody in their village knew about this incident. He insisted that no such incident had taken place in Kala Killay,” the minister said.
Iftikhar lamented that a fake video had been used to tarnish the reputation of the people of Swat and disrupt the peace process in the district. “We condemn the acts of repression against women. We too are outraged when extremist elements commit atrocities against women and also men. But the incident depicted in the videotape never took place in Swat,” he argued.
He felt the timing of the release of the videotape was intriguing. “It appears to be part of a conspiracy to foil the peace agreement in Swat and put pressure on President Zardari not to sign the Nizam-i-Adl Regulation for Malakand division,” he said.

Posted by: b | Apr 6 2009 18:07 utc | 13

I’m not quite sure I understand the outrage. I’ve administered a lot rougher discipline than that (on a girlfriend who was a willing participant, as well as one of her kids who was not so willing). To me, that looked more ceremonial than brutal. If you want to see brutal, spit on a police officer.

Posted by: Jim T | Apr 6 2009 18:15 utc | 14

Swat girl denies flogging by Taliban. link at homepage.

Posted by: Diane | Apr 6 2009 22:48 utc | 15

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