Circumcision no longer acid test to identify Indian spies

ISLAMABAD: In the past, jubilant Pakistani authorities have announced that foreign (read Indian) agents were involved in explosions and attacks in the restive Swat region based on examination of the corpses of the killed attackers.

But the “acid test” cops and officials used to determine whether any of the dead ones was Indian was to check whether the man had been circumcised. If not, they would summarily dub him Hindu and therefore an Indian agent.

But as more such cases showed up, in places where there was not a ghost of a chance of any Indian involvement, doctors and officials began to worry about the methodology. It’s then that they stumbled on a little-known anthropological fact about Pashtun tribes in Waziristan, from where many of the Tehreek-e-Taliban or Pakistani Taliban come.

It appears that many in the backward tribal areas of the country like Waziristan don’t undergo the mandatory circumcision that all Muslim males should undergo. The story took a rather comic turn when some of government’s own injured paramilitary soldiers, when examined, were found to be uncircumcised. This was especially true of wounded soldiers of the Frontier Constabulary from Waziristan, engaged in fighting Taliban militants.

Kamran Khan, a legislator from Waziristan in Pakistan’s lower house of parliament, told the Times of India that many in the poor tribal areas fail to undergo circumcision because it is either not mandated in their tribal codes or because in many villages there are neither hospitals or even barbers, who perform most circumcisions in rural areas.

‘‘People are either circumcised in hospitals or barbers do the job. Neither we have hospitals in Waziristan nor institution of barbers,’’ Khan said, adding that poor people of Waziristan can’t afford to take their male children to other areas for circumcision.