KNUDSEN Honour and violence is a major theme in the anthropology of the Middle East, yet – apart from political violence – most studies approach violence from the perspective of honour. By contrast, this important study examines the meanings of lethal conflict in a little studied tribal society in Pakistan’s unruly North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and offers a new Violence and perspective on its causes. Based on an in-depth study of local conflicts, the book challenges stereotyped images of a region and people miscast as extremist and militant. VIOLENCEAND BELONGING elonging Being grounded in local ethnography enables the book to shed light B on the complexities of violence, not only at the structural or systemic level, but also as experienced by the men involved in lethal conflict. In this Land, Love way, the book provides a subjective and experiential approach to violence that is applicable beyond the field locality and relevant for advancing the and Lethal Conflict study of violence in the Middle East and South Asia. The book is the first ethnographic study of this region since renowned anthropologist Fredrik in the North-West Barth’s pioneering study in 1954. Frontier Province Are Knudsen is Research Director at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in of Pakistan Bergen, Norway. ‘The material itself is extremely interesting, dealing as it does with an exotic locale, and with an intractable problem of endemic violence. … Dr. Knudsen draws this conflictual situation very well, and adds a great deal to the present-day study of violence, putting what is often seen as primordial in the context of modern conditions.’ – Professor Charles Lindholm, Boston University We should make the best possible use of this analysis: for its daring perspectives, extreme empirical findings, and wide relevance. It deserves a very careful reading for its contributions to so many aspects of our understanding of honour, politics and human society. – Professor emeritus Fredrik Barth, Boston University and University of Oslo Cover illustration: A Palas elder displaying his early- 19th-century muzzle-loading rifle and bandoleer. ARE KNUDSEN with a foreword by Fredrik Barth www.niaspress.dk Knudsen_pbk-cover.indd 1 17/11/08 10:57:50 VIOLENCE AND BELONGING Knudsen_final_proof.indd 1 14/10/08 09:29:43 nias – NORDIC INSTITUTE OF ASIAN STUDIES Monograph Series 73. Vibeke Børdahl: The Oral Tradition of Yangzhou Storytelling 74. Cecilia Nathansen Milwertz: Accepting Population Control 75. Sharifah Zaleha Syed Hassan & Sven Cederroth: Managing Marital Disputes in Malaysia 76. Antoon Geels: Subud and the Javanese Mystical Tradition 77. Kristina Lindell, Jan-Öjvind Swahn & Damrong Tayanin: Folk Tales from Kammu – VI 78. Alain Lefebvre: Kinship, Honour and Money in Rural Pakistan 79. Christopher E. Goscha: Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885–1954 80. Helle Bundgaard: Indian Art Worlds in Contention 81. Niels Brimnes: Constructing the Colonial Encounter 82. Ian Reader: Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan 83. Bat-Ochir Bold: Mongolian Nomadic Society 84. 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Are Knudsen: Violence and Belonging Knudsen_final_proof.indd 2 14/10/08 09:29:44 VIOLENCE AND BELONGING Land, Love and Lethal Conflict in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan ARE KNUDSEN Knudsen_final_proof.indd 3 14/10/08 09:29:44 NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph series, No. 115 First published in 2009 by NIAS Press Leifsgade 33, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark tel (+45) 3532 9501 • fax (+45) 3532 9549 email: [email protected] • website: www.niaspress.dk © Are Knudsen 2009 All rights reserved. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Knudsen, Are J. Violence and belonging : land, love and lethal conflict in the North-west Frontier Province of Pakistan. - (NIAS monographs ; 115) 1. Tribes - Pakistan - North-west Frontier Province 2. Ethnology - Pakistan - North-west Frontier Province 3. North-west Frontier Province (Pakistan) - Social conditions I. Title 305.8’00954912 ISBN: 978-87-7694-044-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-87-7694-045-4 (hbk) Typeset by NIAS Press Produced by SRM Production Services Sdn Bhd and printed in Malaysia Knudsen_final_proof.indd 4 14/10/08 09:29:44 TO GUNN, HAAKON AND INGRID Knudsen_final_proof.indd 5 14/10/08 09:29:44 Knudsen_final_proof.indd 6 14/10/08 09:29:44 Contents Foreword xi Preface xv Acknowledgements xxiii Glossary xxvii 1 Introduction 1 Violence and anthropology • Meanings of violence • Reflections on fieldwork and method 2 Belonging to the palas valley 21 Into the valley • Localised Islam • Egalitarianism and equality • Kohistani dwellings • Contact zones • Encountering development • The emerald forests • Historical landscapes • 3 The textured landscape 50 Periodic redistribution: the wesh • The fragmented Shin polity, c. 1500–1700 • Embracing Islam and instituting the wesh, c. 1700–1850 • Decline and dissolution of the wesh, c. 1850–1890 • Indigenous land settlement, c. 1880–1895 • The process of land division • From fields to forest • The Palas wesh 4 Land of contention 67 Maize cultivation • Transhumance • Land-use strategies • Zonation and sociality • Fallow land and enmity • Enforcement of the ban on cultivation • From ban to attack • Social hostility • Fields of fury • Low-yield agriculture 5 Being, longing and belonging 90 Being • Longing • Being in love • The killing of Gulbadan • Defection and exile • Belonging and exclusion vii Knudsen_final_proof.indd 7 14/10/08 09:29:45 Violence and Belonging 6 Condemned and confined 109 Preamble • Inheriting the pare • The killing of Hilal • Abduction and compensation • The troublesome baando • Confinement and mediation • Baram’s confinement • Epilogue • Narrative and subjectivity 7 Magic and honour 125 Love magic • Magic and sorcery • Honour and violence • Jalil’s story • Magic and belonging 8 Contesting the boundaries 138 Forest ecology • The inverted forest • From use value to exchange value • Disputing over grass • ‘The boundaries are written in our hearts’ • Entitlement disputes • Tenurial complexity 9 Brooding over the big trees 157 Knowing and owning the forest • Early timber logging • Commercial forestry • Dividing the big trees • Logging in Kuz Palas • Logging and disputes • Incongruent boundaries • Social boundaries • Claiming their share • Timber ban • Rich forests, poor people 10 Thresholds and transitions 178 Boundaries of belonging • Situating violence • Revenge and retribution • Moral dilemmas • Lethal conflict • The politics of belonging Notes 199 References 209 Index 219 FIGURES 0.1 District Kohistan with fieldwork site xiv 2.1 The Palas valley, District Kohistan 20 2.2a House in Dáro, floor plan 36 2.2b House in Dáro, side view 37 4.1 Yearly cycle 68 4.2 Fields banned from cultivation 80 4.3 Kinship chart – land dispute in Khilbek 85 viii Knudsen_final_proof.indd 8 14/10/08 09:29:45 Contents 5.1 Kinship chart – the killing of Gulbadan 101 6.1 Kinship chart – the killing of Hilal 110 9.1 The Palas valley with conifer forest 158 9.2 Overview of main genealogy 163 9.3 Detail of Kuz Palas forest compartments 170 TABLES 2.1 Electoral politics in District Kohistan 1971–1999 40 4.1 Maize yields at selected sites in the nwfp 84 6.1 Baram’s opponents and allies 117 ix Knudsen_final_proof.indd 9 14/10/08 09:29:45 Knudsen_final_proof.indd 10 14/10/08 09:29:45 Foreword Where the Indus River breaks through the main transverse mountain chains of the Himalayas on its way to the south, there are some of the most inaccessible and impenetrable mountain areas of Asia. The land is generally known as Kohistan, ‘Land of Mountains’, and is occupied by diverse, little studied communities and peoples. Dr Are Knudsen has penetrated this fastness and reached the short, steep valley of Palas, debouching into the Indus Gorge. From his visits there he has brought home unique and fascinating ethnographic materials, from which he has constructed a sensitive and theoretically challenging monograph on the indigenous society formed by its population. This population makes up a truly stateless society, not only lacking in central authority and leadership, but essentially without instituted ways of making binding internal collective decisions. Such decisions are only made consensually and case by case in assemblies or by voluntary mediation. Knudsen recognizes and addresses the paradox that this description raises of how any person can be said to be a ‘member’ of such a social formation. The whole area of Kohistan is notorious in North Pakistan for its anarchy, its violence and danger, its lethal conflicts both within and without.