A Refuge for Afghan Music Is at Risk of Falling Silent

Peshawar is a haven for Afghan artists who fled from the Taliban, which had banned music. A new policy of deportations by Pakistan threatens this community of exiles.

The Pakistani city of Peshawar once offered refuge to generations of Afghans, including musicians who preserved their country’s rich tradition of songs and ballads beyond the Taliban’s reach.

But the rhythms that resonate in wedding halls, concert stages and apartment blocks are falling silent, as the Pakistani government pursues a wave of expulsions that has already forced out a million Afghans since last year.

The musicians are part of a community of Afghan artists that has flourished over decades, and that also includes carpet weavers and dancers. Pakistan provided a haven for millions of Afghans fleeing war and political instability, first from Soviet invaders in the 1980s and later from the Taliban, who first seized power in the 1990s.

The Taliban have banned music, persecuted artists and burned or smashed instruments, both in the 1990s and since reclaiming power in 2021.

Since 2023, the Pakistani authorities have publicly accused the Taliban government of supporting insurgents targeting Pakistan, and in retaliation have declared millions of Afghans illegal — including those who fled after the Taliban takeover.

On a recent morning, the celebratory notes of an Afghan wedding song wafted through Muhammad Hassan Zamri’s music shop after he pushed a worn cassette into a tape deck. A longtime Afghan client ran his fingers through his white beard and sighed, leaving his green tea untouched as he bathed in nostalgia.

“I cannot bring them to Afghanistan because the Taliban will torch them,” Mr. Zamri said about his 2,000 cassette tapes, half of which bowed the crumbling wooden shelves of his shop. Mr. Zamri, who is 52 and fled Afghanistan in the 1980s, said he had already hidden the other half of his collection — a private archive of recordings dating back to the 1950s.

He did not know what might happen to them if he were sent back to Afghanistan.

Exiled Afghan artists have also kept Afghan music alive in other neighboring countries, in Europe and in the United States. But nowhere have musicians flourished across as many generations as in Pakistan, and in Peshawar in particular.

The first wave of emigration, in the 1980s, brought artists like Qamar Gula, one of Afghanistan’s most famous female singers. Exiled Afghan musicians, mostly from the Pashto community, also recorded songs of resistance against the 1979 Soviet invasion on cassette tapes that were smuggled back across the border to bolster the mujahedeen fighting the Red Army.

As Afghanistan plunged into civil war in the 1990s, more artists arrived in Pakistan, performing to the rhythm of tabla drums and rubab, an instrument like a lute. Among them was Homayoun Sakhi, a rubab master who fled to Peshawar as a teenager and later performed in concert halls across the United States, Europe and Asia.

Local Pakistani artists and fellow Afghan musicians have accommodated the newcomers. Tiny apartments became makeshift talent agencies visited by Pakistanis seeking to hire Afghan bands for weddings. Recording studios provided professional equipment to cultural icons like Sadiq Fitrat Nashenas, a star from a golden era for Afghan music before the Soviets came.

By the early 2000s, Peshawar was home to more than 500 Afghan musicians, according to local news reports.

Credit...

“Peshawar has contributed to making many Afghan musicians superstars.”

Hayat Roghani, the founder of Mafkoora, a cultural center in Peshawar where Afghan artists perform.

The second Taliban takeover, in 2021, pushed a new generation of Afghan artists to Peshawar. Now, their songs are promoted on TikTok and YouTube.

Baryali Wali, a Pashto singer, hid his instruments in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, and fled across the border a month after the Taliban seized power in 2021. He has not been back since and missed his daughter’s wedding last summer.

Mr. Wali said he feared that the collective soul of Afghan music would vanish if artists were expelled to Afghanistan. “There are Afghan musicians in exile across the world, but it’s important to have a group component like we have here,” he said in a recording studio in Peshawar.

Expulsions and forced returns have increased in Peshawar and its surrounding province in recent weeks, according to data collected by the International Organization for Migration. “We’re all keeping our heads low now,” Mr. Wali said.

On a recent evening at Mafkoora, the cultural center, the singer Saidullah Wafa performed a tune of longing. “This is my beloved country, this is my life, this is my Afghanistan,” he sang to the notes of two acolytes playing the drums and rubab.

The band played one last song — a jab at the Taliban — before packing up their instruments. “With the Taliban over there or the police here, we feel the same fear,” Mr. Wafa said.

When one of the musicians, Ikram Shinwari, tried to flee Afghanistan in 2021 with his harmonium, the Taliban ordered him to destroy it with his own hands, he said.

Ahmad Sarmast, the exiled founder of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, said that since reclaiming power, the Taliban had gradually imposed repressive cultural policies similar to those of their first era of rule.

“Now Afghanistan might be the only silent nation in the world,” he said.

Wasim Sajjad and Zia ur-Rehman contributed reporting.

Related Content