Dancing girls fear return to Swat

[Naveed Yaseen]

* Say Taliban may return any time

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 Swat.

Famous for its beautiful, pale-skinned 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 – her stage name – to flee. Although some displaced civilians are returning to areas around Swat, she says she is too scared to go home.

Taliban: “I don’t think the situation will return to normal. The Taliban have terrified not only us dancing girls but the entire population in Swat. I think the Taliban can return any time,” she told AFP. “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 associated with prostitution.

“If I dance at a party for whole night, then do you think they will let me go without sex?” said Shabnam.

“It depends on the people, the place and the community where I perform. Sometimes I had sex with four to five people,” she replied. “My cousin Shabana was the most beautiful and popular dancer of Swat. She was murdered in Mingora city’s Green Square,” she tells AFP.

“She was shot dead.” Fearing she was next, Shabnam fled to Peshawar, and says dozens of other Swat dancing girls also escaped.

“Dance was the sole source of our family’s income... If any business is affected it is my business, which suffered badly,” she said, adding that her career in Swat was over. Many well-known television, stage actors and artists based in the city stopped singing or switched to belting out religious hymns after several entertainers were abducted and threatened. Famous Pashtun singer Gulzar Alam survived at least four assassination attempts and is now in self-imposed exile in Kabul.

“We will definitely will go back to Swat if the situation returns to normal as it was two years ago,” said Rozina Khan, 20, another dancing girl who fled to Peshawar with her widowed mother, two sisters and brother last December. “I stopped dancing when the Taliban sent a threatening letter to our area in Mingora two years ago warning us to quit dancing.”

“When I saw Shabana’s body I thought enough is enough. I still go to dancing parties in Peshawar if the place is safe. This is my profession. I can’t do any other work.” As for selling sex, “this is a routine in our profession”, she said. “I always charged extra money for sex. In almost all dancing parties I will have to have sex.” “What else can I do? I don’t want to die, I want to live,” she says. afp

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...009_pg7_51