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Are the Pashtoons giving panah a bad name?
When John Butt set up a BBC radio soap opera for Afghanistan in the 1990s, he became known as the man who brought the Archers—a long-running BBC domestic radio soap opera—to Afghanistan. Now he has moved on from the BBC but is still depicting true Afghan stories through the fictional medium of radio soap opera. Indeed, he is bringing his latest Afghan soap back home: in late June, BBC Radio in Britain are broadcasting a season of his current soap opera: an English version of an everyday story of Afghan folk.
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John Butt |
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One storyline is prominent in the version of our soap opera that the BBC are going to put on later this month. It is a storyline that was on my mind in 1998, when I left the BBC and the Afghan soap opera for new pastures. The storyline seemed topical enough in 1998. It has become even more topical since then. It is a storyline based on the now infamous tradition that tribal Pashtoons from the Pak-Afghan border areas have of giving refuge to outlaws.
The tradition is known as "panah"—giving refuge. Some would count this tradition as among the most cherished tenets of the Pashtoonwali—the code according to which the tribal Pashtoons live. Other tenets of Pashtoonwali include "badal"—taking revenge—and "zeban"—keeping to one's word. But the tradition of panah has changed out of all recognition from what was originally intended. Envisaged as a way of keeping the peace, it has become a catalyst for continued conflict. Rather than providing a refuge for fugitives, it has taken the form of a safe haven for criminals. This corruption of the custom of panah led our first script-editor to exclaim, as he egged the other writers onto writing a gripping storyline on this theme, "Nothing has ruined the Pashtoons more than this confounded custom of giving refuge!"
How did this transformation come about? I remember a sequence of events from the 1970s. Mushtaq and his brothers, who resided in a village near Peshawar, fell foul of their cousins. Things reached a head. Along with his two elder brothers, Mushtaq laid an ambush, as a result of which three of his cousins met their end. Mushtaq's elder brothers were sentenced to death and hanged. Mushtaq fled to the tribal territory, where the arm of the law could not reach him.
Without doubt, Mushtaq had committed a crime. But he had done so in the context of the honour-bound society of which he was a part. Other than this act, which to his mind had been forced upon him, he was an upstanding man. Once he was safely ensconced in the tribal territory, he lived an exemplary life, making use of the fact that electricity had just arrived in the tribal territory to become a line-man—responsible for doing electrical fitting in people's houses. His host in the tribal territory—an honorable and well thought-of man by the name of Haji Yarmat Shah—considered it a feather in his cap that he was able to play host to an outlaw. This meant that he was strong enough to provide guarantee of the outlaw's good conduct, that the outlaw would not pose a threat to anyone—either in the tribal or the settled territories—that he would live peacefully and would not bring the name of his hosts into disrepute.
As with so many of the traditions that Frontier Pashtoons held dear, it was with the Afghan War in the 1980s, and the arrival of many international outlaws—mainly from the Middle East—to take part in the international jihad against the Soviet Union, that the custom of panah began to be tarnished. Now the fugitives were more powerful—and more wealthy—than the hosts. Far from providing a guarantee of their good behaviour, those who accommodated these elements were pleased to be bolstering their international jihad. Once the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, host and fugitive turned their wrath on the Western powers—those who had been their former allies in the anti-Soviet struggle.
It was a pity that we could not carry a storyline in the 1990s reviving the true spirit of panah. It might have been instrumental in averting the subsequent tragedies which overtook the world, with Afghanistan playing a pivotal part in this descent into intensified stand-off and confrontation. This is not just an empty claim. Some of our storylines were indeed instrumental in altering policy—particularly policy of the Taliban government—the government of the day in Afghanistan—for the better.
Along with the BBC correspondent at the time, Alan Johnston who was later taken captive in Gaza, in 1997 I visited Kandahar on a fact-finding trip for our soap opera. "You have a Taliban representative in your soap opera, don't you John Butt," some Taliban foot-soldiers quipped with me. "No, there is no such character in our soap opera," I argued. "Yes, there is," they insisted. "It is Jabbar Khan." And why should this chillum-smoking, opium-growing good-for-nothing have anything to do with you Taliban?" I asked. "He is our representative," they laughed. "He does not let his daughter-in-law go to work!"
That was true. We had devised a storyline that showed Jabbar Khan in a negative light as far as prohibiting women's employment was concerned. Since this position tallied with that of the Taliban, the Taliban had taken the message and realised that we were really trying to get at them. But far from taking umbrage—as they did at so many other international protestations against their policies—they considered it quite amusing that Jabbar Khan should have been chosen to depict one angle of their policy. Not only that. We have actual evidence that the storyline was instrumental in changing Taliban policy on women going to work—at least in health centres.
Around that time, our evaluation team was visiting the east of Afghanistan, around Jalalabad, measuring the impact of storylines that had been covered and collecting material for new storylines. "Why are you carrying storylines suggesting that we do not allow women to work in health centers?" Taliban at some health facility protested. "Come into our health facility and see how many women are working here."
Before the Taliban, "commanders" had been notorious in Afghanistan. In the early 1990s, they were famous for setting up check-posts and fleecing people. The very first episode of our BBC soap opera showed some refugees returning to their country, and rueing their return when they were relieved of their clothes and bed sheets at one of these ubiquitous check-posts. "Oh, so you are in charge of New Home, New Life are you?" one local commander in the central Afghan province of Ghazni said to me in early 1996. "You people have ruined us commanders, and put us to shame!" Far from being put out at us picking on commanders, he seemed to tacitly admit that they had it coming to them, and it would be better for them to put their minds to some more constructive pursuit, as one positive character in the soap opera—a former commander—had done.
Such is the power of fictional soap opera—albeit based on fact. It enables people to laugh at themselves—a first step to undertaking positive self-reform. Since the characters are fictional, people do not become defensive, but are more likely to try and rid themselves of the traits that have led to others being depicted in a negative light.
I am sure our soap opera could have been even more instrumental in bringing about positive changes in many aspects of Taliban policy in the 1990s. The fact that we were not more enterprising in this regard in the BBC soap opera still irks me. I have done my best to make up for our not making full use of the unique position, of being able to directly influence government policy, solely by virtue of putting on an entertaining radio drama series—by spinning a good and telling yarn.
At that time, the BBC in Afghanistan had very little competition and a captive audience of around 70 per cent of the population. Though our current production company based in the border regions—PACT Radio—is a relatively small player in a very congested media market in Afghanistan, the grapevine also has a potent knock-on effect in a country like Afghanistan where gossip and word of mouth are the oldest and still the most powerful media. A storyline does not have to have a huge primary listenership to have a big impact. A lot of the impact comes from people discussing storylines with others and in the process boosting secondary listenership. If a storyline is gripping and convincing enough, it will be talked about. A good story enables one to punch above one's weight.
To my mind, I have been able to acquire this mantle—of being the "man who brought the Archers to Afghanistan"—for two reasons. For one, I came to live among the Pashtoons in the late Sixties—long before the rot started setting in at the beginning of the 1980s. For another, once I was moved by the good traditions of the Pashtoons—their hospitality, their generosity, their big-heartedness, their simple and unaffected love and practice of Islam—to accept the religion, I became a madrassah student myself. My religious studies brought me to India in the late 1970s and I graduated from the pre-eminent seat of Islamic learning in the sub-continent—Darul Uloom Deoband. This has meant that I have always been able to couch criticism of corrupted customs—for example the harboring of international outlaws for purposes other than keeping the peace—in Quranic and Islamic terms. "Help one another in goodness and in piety," the Quranic urges Muslims (5:2). "Do not help one another in sin and transgression."
I would end on a topical, if somewhat controversial point. There is a lot of talk nowadays about drone attacks, targeting international outlaws in the tribal regions. It may sound strange for people to hear that these attacks are in conformity, not only with tribal law, but also to a certain degree with Islamic law. "And beware of an affliction that will not smite exclusively those who have done wrong," the Quran says (8:25). Tribal law has always been based on the principle of collective responsibility. The whole community bears a certain share of the guilt for giving refuge to people who are intent on giving their hosts a bad name, and using their safe haven to spread conflict. So while civilian casualties that occur as a result of drone attacks are regrettable, it might be worthwhile to explain to the local population how they could avoid such casualties—and indeed drone attacks on their homes and villages altogether: by not giving refuge to trouble-makers, or at least ensuring their good behaviour.
An idea for a future storyline? Come to think of it, yes. But when even such a controversial point is couched in fictional terms—and the main players and scenarios altered—then people are able to see the issues for what they are and make reasoned decisions on the course of action they should take. Such is the power of soap opera, that I will be explaining to BBC Radio 4 audiences over the next week, in the run-up to their season of our Pashto radio drama.
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