Tajik star breaks post-Taliban silence and rocks Afghan fans

Tajik star breaks post-Taliban silence and rocks Afghan fans
21.01.2006 To excited cheers and applause, Tajik singer Maniza Daulat launched a series of concerts in Afghanistan this week, becoming the first female singer to take to the stage in this war-shattered country in more than a decade.

Maniza wowed a crowd of about 1,500 male fans who squeezed into a hall in Kabul Thursday for an opening night that took place under heavy security because of fears of attacks by insurgents.

The sultry Tajik star tested the audience in this deeply conservative Islamic country by kicking off with a slow song about her father for which she wore a long black robe and head scarf and barely moved.

Encouraged by the positive response, she changed into tight, Western-style jeans and uncovered her hair -- still rare among Afghan women in public -- for more up-tempo numbers which also had her dancing across the stage.

The concert was the first in a series planned for the capital and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that many said showed Afghanistan was moving away from the its fundamentalist past, which included five years of Taliban rule.

"It is great to be here," 42-year-old electrical engineer Sediq Saleh told AFP. "It brings me hope that we are stepping back towards normal after long years of tyranny and war.

"This concert reminds me of the old days when Tajik bands would come to Afghanistan to play and strengthen the cultural bonds between two Islamic countries who speak the same language," he said.

While the event was a major challenge to the boundaries of acceptability here, it also proved that the conflict-ridden country still has a long way to go: there were no women watching one of the biggest female stars to ever visit Afghanistan.

Four years after the fall of the extremist Taliban regime that forbade females from leaving their homes without the head-to-toe burqa and a male relative, Afghan women seldom attend public events like concerts.

It is even rare for women in this patriarchal society to go to one of the capital's several cinemas.

Their reluctance is in part due to the lingering legacy of the ultra-Islamic Taliban and their fundamentalist mujahedin predecessors who still have some pockets of public support.

The Taliban regime, ousted in a US-led campaign because it sheltered the Al-Qaeda terror network, also declared singing a sin. It denied women the right to education and work; music and televisions were banned.

When the hardliners were driven from power in 2001, weeks after the September 11 attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda, many women dropped the veil and returned to school and work.

But Afghanistan's host of female singers, most of whom live overseas, are still reluctant to take to the stage, especially for live concerts. Many have promised to perform but none have yet dared to.

Maniza is the second famous foreign star to visit Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban, but she is the first woman singer and dancer here since the collapse of the communist regime in 1992, which gave rise to a brutal civil war.

Since the Taliban's ouster, well-known Indian male singer Sunu Nigam and Afghan Farhad Darya, based in the United States, have performed in Kabul.

Such concerts have wide support among young urban fans, although many would have been unable to afford Maniza's price of 2,000 afghanis (40 US dollars) -- almost a month's wage for government employees.

But the events are also opposed by mullahs who dominate the government of President Hamid Karzai, which is battling an increasingly deadly insurgency by Taliban and other militants.

Maniza's show was held under tight security because of the threat of violence, with the area cordoned off to vehicles and monitored by the police and fire brigade. Police and intelligence agents milled among the spectators.

Despite the strict measures, the audience went away impressed.

"A modern city needs entertainment and concerts. We need to catch the caravan of development and have concerts and events to attend after work or on days off," said 30-year-old Mohammad Zarif.

"This concert encourages singers to develop Afghan music ... and it is an opportunity for people to forget about work and daily life and go to happy events. It leads us to a balanced life -- after all, music treats soul."

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