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Peshawar, Pakistan Norman Khan remembers the moment he realized that he could no longer live in his hometown of Afghanistan without fear of being killed.
On the morning of August 15, a few hours before taking control of the Afghan capital of Kabul, Taliban militants poured into Khan’s hometown of Jalalabad, about 120 kilometers east of Kabul, and took control of the city with almost no shots.
As the combatants consolidated control of the infrastructure and marched white flags on the streets, local Taliban members who knew Khan worked as a musician broke into the offices Khan and others used as temporary studios.
They dragged out the band’s organ and tambourine, stacked them in a metal container, and poured gasoline on them. Then they set them on fire.
“I can do nothing but cry,” said Khan, a 22-year-old boy who has been singing and playing the organ since he was a child.
“Music is my hobby and my livelihood. At that moment, I realized that I could not stay in Afghanistan while the Taliban was in power,” he told Al Jazeera in a damp basement in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. He and dozens of other Afghan musicians sought refuge after fleeing Afghanistan. Taliban.
Afghan refugees in Pakistan
The group of musicians in Peshawar is one of thousands of Afghans who have fled their homes for Pakistan since the Taliban took over. They are worried for their lives. But now they find themselves in legal and financial trouble in a country that claims to be unable to accept any new refugees at all.
Music is my passion and my livelihood, singer and organist Norman Khan told Al Jazeera [Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera]According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Pakistan has more than 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees and an estimated 2 million undocumented Afghans live in the country.
Most refugees fled Afghanistan after the war with the Soviet Union, the subsequent civil war, or the 2001 U.S.-led military invasion. According to data from the UN refugee agency, Pakistan has been one of the countries with the largest number of refugees in the world for decades.
Since the Taliban regained power, this number has been rising as thousands of Afghans have tried to enter Pakistan from the southern border crossing in Spinboldak/Chaman.
According to UNHCR data, an estimated 10,800 new Afghan refugees arrived in Pakistan this year, most of whom came from the Chaman border crossing.
Many people who enter Pakistan come from the community. They believe that if they stay in Afghanistan under the Taliban, they will face violence. This may be because of their race, gender, or in this case, they make a living by playing music.
Live in fear
After 38-year-old Shams Rashir went into hiding during the first five days of Taliban rule, he traveled 15 hours from his hometown of Jalalabad and reached the southern border crossing with Pakistan in Spinboldak. point.
Raheel will play rubab, a traditional Afghan stringed instrument similar to the European lute, which appears on the popular Khanda Shpa program of the Afghan TV channel Lemar TV three times a week.
“I grew a beard, changed my appearance, and wore a shawl (thick shawl) on my head, and then I left there,” he snapped his fingers.
“I have nothing but clothes [I was wearing]. My rubab is forgotten… my songbook is also forgotten. “
Raheel said he was deeply depressed after spending the first few days in Pakistan.
“I cried for four or five days,” he said. “When I crossed the border and came here, even in the first 10 or 15 days, my mind kept thinking:’How did this happen? These people came too suddenly and completely overturned the system.” Music ended. “
Thirty-year-old Zia-ur-Rehman sat on the floor of a makeshift “studio”—actually nothing more than a small, poorly ventilated room in the basement of the Peshawar Market—and diverted his eyes uncomfortably as he spoke.
After the Taliban took over, Rahman stayed at Jalalabad’s home for 12 days and finally left in fear.
For him, escaping was the hardest decision in his life.
“This is one of the hardest moments in life, when a man leaves his parents, his siblings, his children,” he said.
For singer and organist Zia-ur-Rehman, escape was the most difficult decision in his life. [Asad Hashim/Al Jazeera]“This is the problem of my life, and that’s why I leave everything behind.”
Although the Taliban have not issued any decree nationwide on whether they will extend the music ban imposed during the organization’s power in the 1990s, several musicians told Al Jazeera that if they did not find a new career, they would be subject to Taliban militants. Personal threats.
“I’m very scared,” said 15-year-old singer Gulwali Shah, better known by his stage name Bilal Afghan. “A threat is being issued to all musicians.”
Shah said that local Taliban fighters came to his home in Khost province, Afghanistan, and told him that he would no longer be allowed to perform.
“[The Taliban fighter] Say I am too old to sing,” he told Al Jazeera. “If I want to, I can sing naats (religious hymns in praise of the Islamic prophet Muhammad). If not, then I have to stop singing or making music. “
Soon after, Shah left home, traveled across the country to Chaman, crossed the border dressed as a beggar, and then persuaded Pakistani border officials to let him cross the border after showing him a YouTube video of his musical performance.
However, not everyone who tries to cross the border is so lucky.
Nowhere to go
Pakistan government many times statement Due to financial constraints, it will not allow any new Afghan refugees to enter the country, and has begun to expel some who have crossed the border without a document.
Pakistani Information Minister Fawad Chowdhury said in an interview with Al Jazeera that there is no “refugee crisis” and the number of people crossing the border is at a regular level.
Chowdhury said that although Pakistan’s policy still does not allow any new refugees, the government is providing convenience for members of “vulnerable groups”, especially those who have obtained access to third countries.
“We have done this, we have evacuated the reporters, and [Afghan national] Women’s Football Team It’s the same,” he said. “And now the musicians are coming. We are helping the disadvantaged. We keep in touch with the Taliban authorities. “
A senior Pakistani government source said that these negotiations were not always straightforward because the Taliban had expressed concerns about Pakistan’s facilitating the exit of Afghan citizens.
“The situation is the Taliban leadership, they know that some groups [rank and file] The fighters may not accept it,” said the unnamed source because they have no right to discuss this issue with the media.
Afghanistan has a rich cultural tradition of instrumental and vocal music, influenced by the forms of Iran, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent [File: Nadeem Khawar/Getty Images]“Our problem is that many people from Pakistan have resentment [from the Taliban] We are actively evacuating Afghans. “
The United States and other countries evacuated more than 100,000 Afghans and foreigners before the US-led NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years of war after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
The UNHCR office in Pakistan stated that so far, “no large-scale displacement of Afghans to neighboring countries has been observed”.
“Pakistan has always supported those who need protection,” said Qaiser Khan Afridi, UNHCR spokesperson in Pakistan.
“We reiterate and call upon those seeking international protection not to return to their country of origin, because their lives or freedoms may be threatened because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of certain social groups or political opinions, or from widespread violence .”
Roots of rejection
Although several theories have been proposed for the general opposition to music, especially instrumental music, by the Taliban in Afghanistan, ethnomusicologists are divided on the source of this rejection.
“Western critics like to attribute the Taliban’s view of music to fundamentalist Islam, but this view is too simplistic,” John Baily, an ethnomusicist at Goldsmiths University in London, published in 2016 Written in the book “War, Exile, and Afghan Music”.
“There is no explicit ban on music within Islam, although the legality of music has been debated within Islam for many centuries.”
The Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic thought seems to believe that music “distracts people’s attention from the memorial and worship of God. The logic behind this ban is that it causes passion, desire and leads to deviations from piety, humility and honor.” Researcher Andrewscu Si wrote a 2002 paper based on the Taliban’s experience in power before the 1990s.
Many of the Taliban’s social restrictions — such as behavior in public and private places — stem from conservative Pashtun cultural traditions, but Bailey writes that this is not “a reasonable argument because Pashtuns are very Love music, even if they have reservations about their performances, and are more willing to patronize hereditary musicians.”
Bailey wrote in a research paper in 2002 that, ultimately, rejection may come from a Puritan account of the purpose of life.PDF).
“In my opinion, the Taliban are simply extreme Puritans and oppose any form of enjoyment or entertainment outside of the religious realm. It is not directly related to Islam, and people can find similar trends in other religions,” he said, adding The organization’s opposition to art and music is likened to the Quaker (Religious Association) in 17th-century Christianity.
No answer
Influenced by the forms of Iran, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan has a rich cultural tradition of instrumental and vocal music. In the past 20 years, since the overthrow of the Taliban, traditional and newer, more modern forms of electronic music and popular music have flourished.
But now, Shams Raheel and his music partners say that since arriving in Pakistan, they are struggling to make a living and are facing an uncertain future.
“Now, there is no work here,” he said. “We don’t have a home. My brother is here with me, and he doesn’t have a job… We just eat, we have no place here.”
Jalalabad singer Noman Khan, his wife and young son have been sleeping on the open balcony of a relative’s house.
“Since I came, I haven’t made any rupees,” he said. “I don’t see an opportunity to do this in the near future.”
The young singer Shah has been living in a converted office with five other musicians since arriving in Pakistan.
“I have a problem here, and I am tired, but there is no way to escape,” he said.
Every Afghan musician interviewed by Al Jazeera said that they were not sure how to proceed and could not see a clear path.
“Who should I ask where to go?” Raheel replied when asked if he knew what to do next.
“We fled from there to Pakistan to save our lives. Now there are questions. So where should we go now? No one can answer the question: Where should we go and what should we do?”
Asad Hashim is a digital correspondent for Al Jazeera in Pakistan. He tweeted @AsadHashim.
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