Pak dancers terrified to return to Swat

Peshawar: Clad in a low-cut dress and heavily made-up, 16-year-old dancing girl Shabnam used to spend her nights twirling gracefully for locals and tourists in Pakistan’s Swat valley.
Famous for its beautiful, paleskinned women, bejewelled dancers of Swat would beguile at house parties, stag nights and hotels, and Shabnam was just 12 when she followed her mother and sisters into the sometimes steamy profession.
But then Taliban fighters infiltrated the valley and her hometown Mingora. Terror forced Shabnam to flee and although some displaced civilians are returning to areas around Swat, she says she is too scared to go home.
“I don’t think the situation will return to normality. The Taliban have terrified not only us dancing girls but the entire population in Swat. I think the Taliban can return any time,” she said.
Pakistan’s northwest has seen creeping religious conservatism over the years and in July 2007 Taliban extremists launched a bloody insurgency to impose a harsh brand of Islamic law across Swat. “About two years ago, the Taliban sent a letter threatening us to stop dancing and singing,” Shabnam said.
Such entertainment forms were branded un-Islamic and retribution was harsh, particularly as they are frequently associated with prostitution. “If I dance at aparty for whole night, then do you think they will let me go without sex?” said Shabnam. She left Swat after her cousin was killed.
Fearing she was next, Shabnam fled to the northwest metropolis Peshawar, and says dozens of other Swat dancing girls also escaped. For two months, Pakistani security forces bombarded fighters in Swat and surrounding districts in a USbacked offensive—the latest of multiple assaults against the militants, but Shabnam says her career is over.
Where video and music shops used to stock the latest Indian and Western releases, now they have been cowed into filling shelves with pious Islamic music or more extreme Taliban propaganda.
“The Taliban will bomb my shop if I do not keep the jihadi and religious stocks,” said Ahmad Shah, a young shopkeeper. AFP

FAZED OUT: The Taliban has forced music and video shop owners in the Swat Valley to fill shelves with pious Islamic music or anti-US chants