Pakistani compensation law for victims of war and terrorism fails to reach many Pashtuns due to weak enforcement, high legal barriers, and lack of political influence for victims.
By Shalini Rao
In 2016, the Pakistani military blew up Ali Wazir’s market, valued at 20 million Pakistani rupees (approximately $90,000), in a military operation in northern Pakistan. Today, Wazir languishes in jail after criticizing the Pakistani government for neglecting Pashtun human rights and failing to compensate victims of terrorism and war as mandated under Pakistani law. The government still has not compensated Wazir or his community members for the damage inflicted on his market in the operation six years ago.
Pakistani law monetarily compensates victims of terrorism, military operations, targeted killings, and other war-related violence. The law has not been enforced or implemented equitably. Political neglect of rural and tribal communities, coupled with an inefficient and costly legal system and a desire for political expediency has made seeking financial compensation difficult and unrealistic for civilians.
Caught between the violence of foreign militaries, the Taliban, and their own military’s operations, civilians became collateral damage for multiple parties in the War on Terror. Ali Wazir gained notoriety for criticizing the Pakistani military’s disruption of the rural Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province in its attempt to counter Taliban activity. To victims in his province, differentiating between the perpetrators of violence rarely mattered. Foreign or domestic, the damage was the same, and justice rarely came.
Conflict and Displacement
For Zar Ali Khan, a friend of Wazir and a fellow Pashtun human rights defender, the government’s neglect reflected an unsurprising pattern of marginalization. He founded the Tribal NGOs Consortium, a non-governmental organization that brought together activists from tribal areas to fight for government accountability, including compensation payments, legal rights, and support for the displaced.
“It was the worst time,” he said of the decade following 9/11 in the KPK province. “There was a mass exodus. Four million people left.”
Years later, many displaced Pashtuns continue to live in camps for internally displaced persons spread across northern Pakistan. Discriminatory state laws prevent them from relocating to Punjab and Sindh, the relatively safer and more prosperous provinces in Pakistan. The displaced Pashtuns received no reparations for their losses nor assistance with relocation.
“Thirty thousand people have been paid, but it was a small amount of money,” he said. The rest of the funds were lost to government corruption.
A Broken Legal System
For Neha Ansari, a former Karachi-based journalist-turned-academic, the ineffectiveness of victims’ compensation fit a familiar pattern: responsive policymaking followed by weak implementation.
“Pakistan had a good couple of years for legislation, but there is no real enforcement,” she said. The law expanded legal rights and compensation amounts, yet the state failed to create a real mechanism to reach those in need.
In her interviews of over one hundred villagers in Waziristan, located in KPK, villagers expressed disillusionment with the amounts of compensation received for terrorist and military activity. The property damage and displacement occurred as a direct result of Pakistani military operations. While the government provided compensation, it came late and in an inadequate amount.
“It was peanuts. It wouldn’t even cover the costs of rebuilding their bathrooms,” Ansari said.
Zoe Richards, a Pakistani lawyer and legal consultant for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, echoed Ansari’s sentiments. According to Richards, the legal system failed to provide an accessible path for civilian justice, and instead, served as an opportunity for politicians to gain political capital.
“The legislation exists, but the path to claiming it is so strenuous,” she said. Between the lawyers’ fees and court sanction fees, the “expenses end up being a lot more than [civilians] stand to receive.”
According to Richards, the high-profile nature of some cases has led to the fulfillment of some victims’ compensation payments. These situations presented an opportunity for elected officials to score points with their constituents and the international community.
“A lot of people come and go on TV and make public statements, but there is no standardized way to assess claims and damages,” Richards said. “It’s a good opportunity to get screen time and tell your constituency that you’re here and you’re doing something for them.”
Influence and Power
In 2014, the Taliban killed over 100 children in the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar, generating international and domestic outrage. Many families received compensation. Some survivors now study at elite universities abroad with tuition supposedly paid for by the Pakistani government.
According to some, the military status of the APS bombing may have better positioned these families to receive compensation than civilian families with no political influence. But even the media attention and high-profile status was not enough to provide adequate justice for APS victims’ families according to Richards. Transparency into these claims and any discrepancies between which families received payments remains low.
“A lot of families claimed that even though the government galvanized [around the shooting] and launched a response against the terrorists, somehow the conversation of rehabilitation of victims and reparations never came to the forefront,” Richards said. “The system is stacked against civilians.”
The political grandstanding around the APS shooting failed to impress Khan and counterparts.
“Pakistan is a banana republic. Everything is a mirage,” he said.
For Khan, the meager payments provided to a fraction of displaced Pashtuns did not just reflect policy weakness or bureaucratic ineffectiveness, but rather highlighted intentional, systematic neglect by the government – a choice not to put money toward his community.
“The poor people with no influence still have not been compensated,” Khan said. “28 billion Pakistani rupees was given to China to purchase fighter jets. This was the money for the victims.”
Educated youth activists who worked with the Tribal NGOs Consortium, aware of their legal rights, tried to address the compensation discrepancies directly with the federal government. They went to Islamabad to peacefully protest, demand compensation, and seek the halting of terrorist support by the government in KPK in response to Wazir’s arrest. Yet, their actions failed to secure Wazir’s freedom or influence a serious dialogue on tribal community justice.
“The government didn’t want the people to know [their] democratic rights, constitutional rights, women’s rights, or human rights,” said Khan. “He’s still there because he was talking.”