TWENTY-FIVE years ago, Fehmida and Allahbakhsh
were awarded 80 lashes and death by stoning
respectively by a Karachi court under the Hudood
ordinances. In reaction to this savage sentence,
the Women’s Action Forum was born to fight
against the oppression of women.

Launched by seventeen women in Karachi, WAF has
grown into an amorphous, non-hierarchical
umbrella body of national dimensions that brings
together numerous organisations - at times over
20 in number - seeking justice for women.
Regrettably, as Anis Haroon, a founder member,
observed at the 25^th anniversary celebration in
Karachi last week, the problems they had set out
to resolve in 1981 continue to haunt the women of
this country even today.

Ironically, at that point in time when WAF was
commemorating the two and a half decades of its
existence, the government of another general in
uniform was busy hobnobbing with the religious
parties to decide the fate of the same ordinances
that have been responsible for serious
miscarriage of justice for thousands of innocent
women who have suffered protracted incarceration.
As we now know, the government’s manoeuvrings in
Islamabad last week, which were projected as an
effort to save the Women’s Protection Bill, only
helped to throw this piece of legislation into
cold storage. The fact is that the government’s
policy of seeking the approval of the MMA for the
proposed bill amounted to giving a new lease on
life to the Hudood ordinances that had given
birth to the Women’s Action Forum in the first
place.

Initially organised as a body to struggle for
women’s rights and lobby for the repeal of the
unjust and discriminatory laws that were being
enacted in quick succession by the Zia regime,
WAF emerged as a powerful pressure group. It
challenged the government’s anti-woman policies
and made its voice heard against the law of
evidence and the Qisas and Diyat laws. It also
began taking up various issues of concern to
women, ranging from their exclusion from
spectator sports to their poor status in the
health, education and employment sectors. In the
process, WAF also worked to create public
awareness about women’s rights and create
consciousness in a large number of them that
changed their perception of their own role in
society and gave a boost to their self-esteem.

WAF’s contribution in giving birth to a nascent
women’s movement in the country has been widely -
though grudgingly - acknowledged by many. Its
impact on national life manifested itself in
another way, though this has not been so widely
recognised. The Women’s Action Forum radicalised
the politics of dissent at a time when General
Ziaul Haq ruled the country with an iron fist.
His was the darkest period in the history of
Pakistan when repressive laws were enacted to
curb the freedoms of the citizens. Censorship
silenced the press. Brutal punishments such as
whipping and flogging, the threats of stoning and
the amputation of limbs terrorised the people
into abject submission.

Not many summed up the courage to challenge the
government’s writ. The state institutions such as
the judiciary had already fallen in line and the
few individual judges who refused to conform with
the military dictator’s wishes were edged out. It
was the judiciary that was used to execute an
elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His
party was paralysed and his wife and daughter
were first thrown into prison and then sent into
exile. In this scenario, which could have led to
widespread despair and despondency, WAF was the
only organisation that kept people’s sights
trained on the light at the end of the tunnel.

It may not have been as a result of calculated
deliberation, but WAF’s success in mobilising
women and bringing them out on the streets (even
though in modest numbers) and collecting
thousands of signatures proved to be a catalyst
for politics when the political process was all
but dead. Women defied martial law regulations to
demonstrate their anger at the discriminatory and
anti-women policies of the Zia regime. They broke
the ice and soon enough liberal-minded men who
supported the struggle for women’s rights and
human rights joined hands with WAF.

Initially there was an intense debate in WAF
about the causes it should espouse. Since it had
started as a body fighting for the repeal of the
Hudood ordinances - which by implication amounted
to a struggle for women’s rights - it was felt
that WAF’s role should be that of a champion of
women’s rights. In their book Women of Pakistan:
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? Khawar Mumtaz
and Farida Shaheed observe, "... the public
became suddenly interested in the political
potential of WAF ... [it] was approached by trade
unions, politicians and intellectuals who all
offered advice on how WAF could be more
effective. WAF was urged to form links with
various other organisations and groups and work
for the restoration of democracy. When WAF
refused to act on this advice and continued to
confine itself to women’s issues, the level of
criticism increased. WAF was accused of playing
into the government’s hands by diverting
attention from the more serious and basic problem
of martial law versus democracy."

Though WAF chose to be non-political in its
structure and functioning and maintained its
distance from the political parties, it gradually
began adopting a position on issues that did not
fall exclusively within the purview of the
women’s question. This can be attributed to the
close link between women’s problems and politics
which cannot be de-linked. This was evident at
WAF’s anniversary celebration last week where two
women activists - one a labour leader from
Balochistan and the other from the Pakistan
Fisherfolk’s Forum - spoke of problems that were
purely of a political nature.

The former recounted the opposition she had faced
from the feudals in her area when she sought
re-election because of her contributions to the
masses in her constituency. The latter spoke of
the travails of the fisherfolk (mainly men) who
were not granted licences by the government and
were picked up and thrown into Indian prisons
when they inadvertently strayed into Indian
waters.

Given this thrust, it is not surprising that of
the eight resolutions adopted at the anniversary
function, six were of a general nature. Thus the
demand for the repeal of the Hudood ordinances -
endorsed very vociferously by the audience - and
an end to practices like swara, vani, karo kari
and so on focused on women. But WAF also
condemned the new labour laws, demanded an end to
the military action in Balochistan, called for
provincial autonomy, resolved to strengthen
movements for the protection of people’s
livelihood and build forces to counter and defeat
the forces of globalisation, and opposed violence
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Palestine, Lebanon
and all regions facing militarist aggression.

It is now more than obvious that WAF’s major
contribution has been integrating the women’s
problem with political issues - a connection that
has come to be realised all over the world. Given
the fact that women constitute nearly half of the
population in every society and the growing
recognition of their substantial, though
invisible, role in the economy and social
development of a people, it is natural that the
woman’s perspective has assumed greater
importance. But if WAF is to survive, it will
have to keep its distance from political parties,
many of which would love to have it enter their
fold.