“I’m not a toy … I don’t want to be married to someone forcibly.”

These words by Inteha Bibi stayed with me long after I first read them. She was speaking about Ghag, a custom still practised in parts of Pakistan’s Pashto belt, where a man publicly “claims” a woman as his future wife without her consent, often by firing gunshots outside her home. The message is fear. The purpose is control.

For many women, the fear does not end with the gunshots. It follows them for years, through broken engagements, social isolation, threats and, sometimes, violence from their own families for daring to resist.

The scale of this violence is not slowing. Gender-based violence against women rose by 25 per cent across Pakistan in the first eleven months of 2025. Between January and June alone, more than 15,000 cases were formally registered: honour killings, rape, kidnapping, physical abuse, cyber harassment and domestic violence. Behind each number is a woman, a daughter, a sister.

And these are only the cases that surfaced. According to the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey, an estimated 53 per cent of women never report what happens to them, while more than half do not even tell their own families. The silence is its own statistic.

Across Pakistan, customs like Ghag take different forms but produce the same outcome. In Vani or Swara, girls are married........

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