British goverment's "snatch squad" in Pakistan

Daily Times, December 10, 2005
British HC ‘snatch squad’ rescuing forcibly-married women
Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: The British High Commission in Islamabad has set up a “diplomatic snatch squad” to rescue British women of dual nationality being forced to marry Pakistani men by their families, reported the UK newspaper The Guardian.

Talking to the newspaper, Helen Feather, head of the consular section and leader of the special team, said, “This is a human rights abuse and these are British nationals in distress.” She said the team’s mission was to pluck the reluctant brides from the clutches of their cousins and put them on a plane back to Britain. The team saved 105 young people last year, she added.

According to The Guardian, diplomatic jeeps on average leave the compound for villages in Punjab and Kashmir twice a week. The pioneering programme is sensitive and secretive, plunging British officials into a world of clashing cultures and family traumas.

Consular official Jon Turner described to the newspaper how the rescues typically worked. A worried relative or boyfriend in the UK usually makes the initial contact with the Foreign Office. Sometimes the victim herself sends an SOS. Through hushed late-night conversations and secretive text messages, Turner and his team establish contact. After days or weeks of careful preparation, a time and date are agreed.

The element of surprise is crucial, Turner tells The Guardian. Local police are informed hours beforehand, and asked to provide backup. Some officers are sympathetic - others need persuading. Finally, Turner knocks on the front door. What follows, he admits, is a wrenching experience for everyone.

Flustered relatives plead with the girl to stay, often resorting to emotional blackmail. “The family can be very tough and vitriolic,” says Turner. “They say, ‘Your father will have a heart attack,’ ‘Your mother will commit suicide,’ ‘You will bring dishonour to our family.’“ The team can do little other than to remind relatives that any trouble could reflect poorly in future visa applications. The victim, says Turner, almost always feels guilty. “That’s why we try to make it quick.”

The Guardian reports, the young woman is rushed to Islamabad and lodged in a refuge run by Struggle for Change (Sach), a Pakistani organisation that supports victims of forced marriage and domestic violence. The high commission will issue an emergency passport and, if necessary, loan her the price of her plane fare home. The address of the refuge is kept secret in case furious relatives try to snatch the woman back. Within a few days she travels to the airport; in high-risk cases she may be hidden under a shawl, flown out from a regional airport or escorted on to the plane.

Most rescues are resolved peacefully, the newspaper quoted Turner as saying. But in a country where so-called “honour killings” - in which reluctant young women, are murdered rather than bring dishonour on the family - are frequent, the dangers are real. An armed bodyguard comes on every rescue. During one encounter, police cocked their weapons and formed a circle around the woman as they left the house. “It turned out her uncle was a well known kidnapper, extortionist and murderer,” says Turner.

Forced marriage is the ugly flipside of arranged marriage, a widespread and highly valued tradition in south Asia. Parents play a central role in such unions, carefully vetting their children’s partners. The criteria often depend on class: the rich look for a western education and a decent income; poorer classes worry about caste and creed. Only the most liberal Pakistani families indulge in what are disparagingly referred to as “love marriages”. Still, young people can usually refuse to go ahead if they don’t like their prospective partner. But in a forced marriage there is no consent, just the brutally imposed wishes of the family. “This is a patriarchal society where women and children are considered as the possessions of males. They have no options, no say, no choices,” says Khalida Salimi of Sach.

British citizens also become trapped in forced marriages in other countries. Diplomats have carried out rescues in India and Bangladesh, as well as Africa and the Middle East. But no other country comes close in scale to Pakistan, which has an estimated 80,000 dual nationals and accounts for 60 percent of cases handled by the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit. One-fifth of cases involve men but none has yet been rescued, the unit instead helping with travel papers and money.

Sach has tried to spark a debate on forced marriage through the media and visits by Muslim scholars to debunk myths about women’s role in Islam. “Forced marriage is part of our customs and traditions. It has nothing to do with the law and religion. In fact, it is the very opposite,” says Dr Noreen Khalid, who counsels the runaway brides. Sach’s efforts have met with stiff, occasionally violent resistance. A Sach driver who was helping a couple to elope was kidnapped and badly beaten for several hours in Rawalpindi.

Repercussions against the women themselves are far worse. One forced marriage victim had her nose, tongue and hair chopped off, says Salimi. Another was killed. “I remember the girl well; she stayed with us in 2000 before going to Britain,” says Salimi. “The next year she returned to reconcile with the family, then she was found dead. They say she slipped, fell into a canal and drowned. We think it was murder.”