Pashtunwali: the Pashtun code of honour and conduct

An unwritten code

Pashtunwali (پښتونولي), "the way of the Pashtuns", is the body of custom and values by which Pashtuns judge right conduct. M. Jamil Hanifi, writing in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, calls it the Pashtun charter for appropriate behaviour. It includes upholding a man's honour and avoiding shame, protecting the reputation of the women of his family, redress for injury, hospitality to guests, refuge for those who ask for it, the profession of Islam and respect for other parts of Pashtun custom. [1]

Pashtunwali is not a written law. A 2024 report for the Austrian asylum authority quotes a tribal elder from Paktia saying that its rules are not codified, and describes them as passed down through language, family life and gatherings rather than texts. A 2007 British government cultural guide describes it as defining relations between kin, regulating relations between families and tribes, and providing a quasi-legal way of resolving disputes and imposing sanctions. [4] [3]

Honour

Honour, nang (ننګ), sits at the centre. The Library of Congress country study of Pakistan calls it the foremost element of the code and describes it as understood in all-or-nothing terms. The British guide explains that honour can be lost by breaking a social rule or by suffering shame or humiliation at the hands of others, and that most other values exist to protect or restore it. [2] [3]

Honour is tied to the family's control of property and the protection of its members. The country study notes that a man's greatest rival for women, wealth and land (zan, zar and zamin) is often his first cousin, even though the same cousin may be his strongest ally against outsiders. [2]

Hospitality and refuge

Hospitality, melmastia (مېلمستيا), is one of the best-known parts of the code. The country study describes shared meals as a way of showing respect, friendship and alliance, and notes that a host gains honour by serving his guest. It also links hospitality to the duty to shelter anyone, even an enemy, for as long as he is within the host's home. [2]

This duty of refuge is known as nanawatai (نناواتې). Hanifi defines it as granting asylum to those who seek peace, forgiveness or protection, and the British guide adds that it carries connotations of forgiveness. Practice has limits: the 2024 report says that some tribes refuse refuge to a person who has committed murder. [1] [3] [4]

Badal: redress and revenge

Badal (بدل) is usually translated as revenge. Hanifi describes it as a form of balanced or negative reciprocity in response to real or symbolic injury, physical or verbal. The country study notes that minor disputes may be settled by negotiation but that killings were expected to be avenged, and it describes vendettas and feuds as an endemic feature of social relations. [1] [2]

The British guide argues that badal is more complex than "an eye for an eye": its purpose is to restore balance in social relations after a dispute, and it is distinguished from ghach, plain revenge. Feuds can also be ended through a council of elders, the jirga, which is itself counted among the institutions of Pashtunwali. [3] [1]

Namus and the household

Namus (ناموس) refers to the honour of the family's women and, more broadly, to what a man must protect. Hanifi links it to the proper conduct of a man's female dependents. The British guide notes that men are bound by namus as much as women, so that a man who enters a women's space uninvited is himself dishonoured, and that strict separation of the sexes (purdah) is one of the ways it is maintained. The country study records that, for this reason, women were largely kept within family compounds in much of the then North-West Frontier Province. [1] [3] [2]

Other values

Writers list the elements of Pashtunwali differently, and no single list is authoritative. Among those commonly named are: [3] [4]

• ghayrat (غيرت): the defence of property or homeland

• tura or tureh: bravery

• sabat: loyalty to kin, tribe and community

• jirga (جرګه): settling disputes and making decisions in a council of elders

• azadi: freedom and independence [3] [4]

Practice, change and criticism

Pashtunwali is lived rather than applied like a statute, and it varies by place and over time. The country study observed that feuding had declined in Pakistan's settled districts even though people remained loyal to the ideals. The 2024 report finds that Pashtuns in Afghan cities have moved away from some customs, while village communities follow them more closely, and it credits education, the media and urban life with this change. [2] [4]

Parts of the code also attract serious criticism. The 2024 report lists drawn-out feuds, forced marriage and the giving of girls in marriage to settle disputes among its harmful effects, and notes that the Taliban leader has issued a decree forbidding the last of these. In Pakistan, federal and provincial law officers told the Supreme Court in 2019 that they would curb honour killings and the settlement marriages known as swara and wani. [4] [5]