Postcard: Peshawar

By Aryn Baker

Bakht Munih, 43, knows porn when he sees it. He scans a display of DVDs and jabs a finger at one that depicts a man and a woman, their faces perilously close. "That's a porno," the fruit vendor shouts. "It's a man kissing a woman." Aziz ul-Haq, the video-shop owner, is incredulous. "This is a family drama, a romance, nothing more," he says. The crowd of men crammed into this darkened shop nods in agreement with Haq. But Munir storms out with a warning: "These movies are destroying the character of our children."

It's an argument Haq and other video-shop owners like him can't win in this Pakistani frontier town. It often ends with unknown assailants bombing their stores in the night. Haq's shop is the latest to be bombed by what locals call the Taliban, religious vigilantes who don't necessarily come from Afghanistan but who take their cue from its erstwhile rulers. No one was hurt by the 4 a.m. bombing of his store, but the message was clear. So Haq is getting out of the video business, as owners of some 40 similar shops in the neighborhood have also done. "If we do not close, someone will force us to close," says Haq. "They are powerful. We cannot resist."

Even though the military, eager for progress before Pakistan's Feb. 18 general election, has reported success against Islamists in the nearby Swat Valley, the militants' campaign against entertainment in Peshawar has only escalated. During the 1990s, when Taliban rule in Afghanistan forced scores of refugee artists into Pakistan, Peshawar became the capital of pop culture for the Pashtun, an ethnic-minority group numbering some 39 million along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Local producers built a formidable movie industry that served up a formulaic diet of violence and sexism (but no sex) to Pashtun populations on both sides of the border. This uniquely Pashtun take on exploitation cinema was hardly the stuff of international film festivals --"Those films are so horrible, they should be banned," quips University of Peshawar professor Shah Jehan--but it was an authentic expression of Pashtun culture celebrated by thousands of moviegoers every day. Now the industry has gone underground or moved to cities such as Lahore and Abbottabad in the hope of escaping fundamentalists. The industry's flight from Peshawar has left tens of thousands unemployed, says Ejaz Nayak, 24, an actor who has appeared in 45 movies over the past seven years. He hasn't worked in two months. "No one is doing films anymore. People are afraid."

Musicians are suffering too. Wedding parties no longer risk hiring live entertainers, says Ivan Shafiq, a music producer. He estimates that sales of Pashtu music cassettes have fallen by half. "Our music sells in those shops," he says. "If all retail outlets are closing down, the distributors and producers won't give contracts to make albums anymore. And these artists don't know how to do anything else."

The extremists may have a political as well as a religious motive. By targeting entertainers, the militants undermine confidence in the state, while fewer movies means fewer distractions for potential recruits. "These entertainers are stealing an audience away from the mullahs, so the musicians have become their enemies," says Jehan.

To Mohammad Fayaz, a doctor who six years ago derided to follow his lifelong dream of becoming a Pashtu movie direc tor, the recent threats are a new blow to an already unstable industry. Indian imports and the rise of cable television have eroded box-office takes for several years. People worry that cinema halls will be the next target of extremists, he says. "The industry has been in a long fall Then the bombs crashed the business." Nonetheless, he intends to keep directing movies as long as he is able. "Movies are my addiction," he says. His next film is called Oh, My Crazy Heart In this current environment for the movie moguls of Peshawar, it helps to be a little crazy--or addicted--to stay in the business.