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Voices of freedom: Afghan politics in radio soap opera Andrew Skuse Ethnography 2005; 6; 159 DOI: 10.1177/1466138105057547 The online version of this article can be found at: http://eth.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/159

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graphy Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com Vol 6(2): 159–181[DOI: 10.1177/1466138105057547]

Voices of freedom Afghan politics in radio soap opera ■

Andrew Skuse University of Adelaide, Australia

A B S T R A C T ■ This article examines the creative labour of a group of Afghan radio soap opera writers scripting a popular social realist BBC World Service radio drama for broadcast in Afghanistan. Analysis centres on struggles over the political representation of the Taliban within the soap opera between 1996–8, a period in which they dominated politically and militarily. A tension is revealed in analysis between the individual political beliefs of writers and the simultaneous need to ‘realistically’ represent Afghan social and political lives. Production accommodations resulted in the active portrayal of a nostalgic and traditional vision of Afghanistan. It is suggested that these representations ultimately denied a conservative Taliban presence within the soap opera, the portrayal of tradition kept alive for these writers an acceptable sense of a future that held more liberal possibilities than Taliban alternatives.

KEY WORDS

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Afghanistan, radio, soap opera, politics, nostalgia

This article concerns political representation as socially and culturally constructed in radio soap opera production and consumption. A relational stance to media is taken in analysis via the juxtaposition of the creative labour of a small group of professional Afghan scriptwriters and producers working on a BBC World Service soap opera, with that of audience readings during the period 1996–8.1 This time frame locates the research at a critical juncture in contemporary Afghan history, prior to the US-led


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E t h n o g r a p h y 6(2)

intervention (2001), when the orthodoxy of the Taliban held sway religiously, politically and militarily across much of the rugged terrain of Afghanistan. The soap opera in question was established in 1993 in the midst of the humanitarian tragedy that was the Afghan civil war (1989–2002), which itself had roots in the brutal Soviet occupation of 1979–89 (Rais, 1994). The production, then and now, is broadcast three times per week (15 minutes per episode) in the languages of Pashtu and Dari and is titled Naway Kor, Naway J’wand (Pashtu) and Khana-e-nau, Zindagi-e-nau (Dari), both of which translate as New Home, New Life, a title that echoes the initial optimism of the post-Afghan communist era (1992 onwards). Broadcast continuously for the past 12 years, the soap opera remains enduringly popular and this popularity reflects both high levels of radio ownership and a listenership that is burgeoning (Skuse, 2002a). In comparison, television audiences remain small, their scale being significantly restricted by a combination of poor technical infrastructure, widespread poverty that impedes television ownership and a religious and cultural conservatism that deems television, due to its portrayal of the human image, a form of idolatry and therefore profane. New Home, New Life follows a tried and tested ‘entertainmenteducation’ format derived from BBC Radio Four’s domestic production The Archers in which five discrete scenes are developed in each episode from a fairly small character base located within a fictitious, but somehow atypical, rural agricultural community in England (de Fossard, 1997; Rigbey, 1993; Tufte, 2001). The genre typically mixes ‘useful’ and ‘useable’ information, without being especially didactic, concerning a broad range of humanitarian and development-related issues with that of high melodrama. For example, by dramatizing the death of a child from diarrhoea the production can address both the causes and consequences of poor hygiene, and in the process highlight the ways and means of basic disease prevention. In the absence of significant physical aid flows following the collapse of the Afghan Socialist Government in 1992 and subsequent descent into civil war, the New Home, New Life production was conceived as an alternative, albeit informational, ‘humanitarian lifeline’. In conflict scenarios mass media interventions are increasingly employed by governments and nongovernment actors within broader processes of humanitarian assistance, as well as in mainstream processes of human development, principally as a ‘tool’ of change and conflict reduction (DFID, 2000; Rockefeller Foundation, 1999; UNAIDS/Penn State, 1999). For example, Mandel (2002) has interestingly highlighted how television drama in Kazakhstan has been used to problematize the rapid shift from command to capitalist economy, whilst Vink (1988) and Martín-Barbero (1995) have examined


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the Central and Latin American telenovela television serial genre, analysing it from the perspective of a key guide to nationalism, modernity and social change. Though firmly rooted within the ‘entertainment-education’ genre and ostensibly concerned with humanitarianism and development, the New Home, New Life production, like mainstream mass media productions, also constitutes an ongoing terrain of creative struggle and endeavour over interpretations of Afghan culture, politics and society. These struggles are manifest in the social relations and politics of script writing and programme production, as well as in audience evaluations of the soap opera’s multiple and interwoven narratives, its politics and social realism. Inevitably, media production and consumption are fields in which the popular and political merge within such processes (Abu-Lughod, 2004; Pedelty, 1995). The radical disconnect in much existing media research between the sociality of production and consumption, combined with the broader privileging of audience reception studies over studies of production, has resulted in a dearth of qualitative studies that focus on media production, the long-term ethnographic work of Born (2004), Dornfeld (1998) and Graffman (2004) being notable exceptions. Increasingly it is anthropology and its attention to fine cultural detail that is helping to reveal more complex and subtle aspects of mass media production and audience appropriation, especially where they articulate with subjective histories and fluid political terrains (see Foster, 2002; Rofel, 1994). In assessing these highly fluid and shifting semantic fields within the specific context of Afghanistan, the correlated issue of the social construction of aspects of freedom and agency, in both an individual and broader sense, comes to the fore in analysis and informs the deeply negotiated and contested soap opera production processes concerning political interpretation and representation.

Freedom and practical nostalgia A feature of much media-related research posits the audience with the ability to resist domination, to engage in a dialogical engagement with media texts and in the process resist their perceived hegemony. Little mention is afforded in such discussions of the ability of media producers to do likewise. Whilst the theoretical frames of hegemony, counter-hegemony and dialogue remain important analytical pillars within the social sciences, anthropology offers more complex and relativizing interpretations of the plays of power in specific social contexts (Gledhill, 1994). This relativizing gaze has been applied in social theory as well as in numerous studies of political economy in contexts where struggles for voice, representation and emancipation lead us to question the nature of personal freedoms and


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human agency (Foucault, 1977; Scott, 1985). Whilst few such studies acknowledge domains of popular or media culture, the work of Fabian (1998) provides a very useful entry point. In his ethnography of a genre of popular portrait painting in the Democratic Republic of Congo he notes that: . . . modern anthropology has [tended] to align freedom with the individual and culture with the collective. But that cannot be the only way to relate these concepts to each other. Culture can be the source of individual freedom in situations of collective oppression, and the most significant achievement of popular culture may be to create collective freedom precisely in situations where individual freedom is denied or limited. (Fabian, 1998: 19)

The extent to which freedom is constructed as something that is elusory and fleeting, to have and to hold, but ultimately to lose under pressure of forces of social, political and economic domination or coercion, tasks researchers with looking to the discrete processes of imagining and remembering within the production and consumption of popular cultural forms, radio soap opera included. Within this article freedom is problematized from a number of perspectives. First, as something that emerges from the creative endeavours of New Home, New Life’s Afghan scriptwriters, which is embodied in the production’s dramatic narratives and is reflective of production struggles over political and moral interpretations of Afghan society. Though seemingly bound by rigid BBC production guidelines concerning political impartiality, analysis highlights how such policy is actively appropriated and employed as an intrinsic component of the structuring of alternative political realities. This point is given weight by Dornfeld (1998), who suggests that anthropologists need to ‘rethink’ producers and recognize the extent to which they are bound and constrained by ‘culture, ideology and economy’ and situated within social, political and institutional contexts generative of distinct aesthetic, moral and creative outlooks (Brenneis, 1990; Ginsburg, 1994). Second, freedom is examined from an audience perspective, as a form of ‘collective escapism’ from the pressing political and social realties of daily life as lived in Afghanistan during the Taliban era (1994–2002). Here, processes of reminiscing intertwine with far more critical readings of the New Home, New Life production as a media text that is widely recognized to be both socially ‘unreal’ and essentially historical. Buttressing both of these perspectives is an unstable and fluid third perspective, that of the culturally relative notions of freedom that inform concepts of individualism, collectivity, locality and nationalism (Anderson, 1983). Critical then to understanding Afghan politics is recognition of the extent to which culture frames and delimits the degree to which the ‘state’, as an


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historically abstract and often remote entity, has been capable of penetrating and influencing traditional rural society (Tapper, 1983). Indeed, the nature of Pashtun culture and society, which provides the ethnic focus herein, and its tendency towards in-group alliances, exchanges, autonomy and self-regulatory legalistic tribal codes has historically negated the influence and presence of central authority (Atayee, 1979; Shahrani, 1986). Whilst tending towards the structuring of an extremely powerful sense of individual freedom and agency in Pashtun culture and society, such constructions are inherently gendered. Women and their social and cultural roles are normatively constructed as essentially domestic – due to the social and emotional segregation that emerges from the practice of purdah (sexual segregation of women). Men, on the other hand, are constructed in discrete opposition, with rationality and strength of purpose in the worldly and public fields of politics and economy being normative cultural traits, whilst weakness is typically perceived as something that others will exploit if given the chance: If you see a wounded man you feel sorry for a few minutes, but women will talk about these things for days and this shows that they are good people. Men don’t believe in each other’s difficulties or just don’t care, because they’re without sorrow for such things. (Male respondent, Kabul)

From an early age boys are taught the social art of public restraint and impassivity in demeanour, this being perceived by Lindholm (1982) as intrinsic to the development of the honourable ‘ideal-typical’ Pashtun male. Hardness and steely rationality are perceived as positive male traits that combine with collectively held notions of male equality and individual freedom. Thus, to maintain individual freedom is to maintain one’s political and economic agency, and by association one’s reputation and honour (namus). That individual and collectively held notions of political, religious and cultural freedom should be entwined in the soap opera’s narratives through the scripting process is perhaps unsurprising and to a large degree inevitable. However, the historical tenor of these narratives leads us, necessarily, to an investigation of the way history is invoked and manipulated towards discrete contemporary ends. Indeed, anthropology shows us that claims to power are staked as much in the past as they are in the present and whilst both Leach (1954) and Lan (1985), amongst many others, highlight the manipulation of history in pursuit of political ascendancy, the former with respect to Highland Burma and the later with respect to Zimbabwe, we should not assume that history represents some form of tabula rasa that is subject to the explicit whims and needs of the present. Appadurai is highly critical of past anthropological perspectives that, to use his terminology, define history as some kind of ‘limitless and plastic symbolic resource’ (1981: 201; cf. Peel, 1984). He


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argues to the contrary, stating that constructions of the past within the present are framed by constraints associated with the authority of sources, the plausibility of evidence and the fit with other socially sanctioned histories. Clearly, the introduction of the formal constraints of authority, plausibility and evidence begs a focus on: . . . the competitive process by which values are defined, images of transactions contrived, and interpretations of a situation successfully imposed by one party on others. (Appadurai, 1981: 202–3)

Debate and motivations for debating and depicting ‘certain’ pasts provides an interesting terrain against which to examine the production and appropriation of soap opera narratives. Whilst issues relating to authority, plausibility and evidence are a salient feature of audience concerns over the socio-political realism of the New Home, New Life production, there are several aspects of the use and manipulation of history that Appadurai does not adequately address. First, there is the social construction of the past in the present as a means of thinking through and defining an acceptable sense of future. Here, the corollary to Appadurai’s thesis concerns the role of loss, change and the individual and social construction of nostalgia as a practical act of remembering and imagining that may also be contested and highly political. Second, recognition needs to be given to the role of mass media both in structuring public opinion and in promoting ideologically charged versions of history that, for example, seek to promote trust as an ontological underpinning of the nation-state. Elsewhere, it has been argued that the BBC World Service became, to all intents and purposes, the de facto national broadcaster of Afghanistan, due in part to the periodic destruction of Radio Afghanistan, but more importantly to the widespread loss of audience trust in national broadcasting that occurred during the 1980s (Skuse, 2002a). Whilst Appadurai casts the process of discourse building concerning histories as one that is locally grounded and framed by vectors of authority, plausibility and evidence, it is logical to suggest that the same rules may not apply to the way popular media forms construct and represent history through discrete political interpretations. Much has been written on the anthropology of conflict, displacement and social exclusion, from which emerges a particular concern to examine the role of nostalgia (Colson, 1971; Marris, 1974). Davis (1992), in an interesting paper on suffering, suggests it to be an intrinsic yet inevitably differential aspect of social life, one that is placed in memory and incorporated with accumulated culture. Within social memory lies that part of creativity from which our ability to imagine an acceptable sense of society and community stems.2 Yet care must be exercised when the term ‘nostalgia’ is invoked, since in this context it means far more than a simple yearning


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for bygone ways. In this regard, Battaglia (1995) argues that as a term, nostalgia can be recast as a ‘vehicle of knowledge’, one that is ‘practised’ in diverse ways. ‘Practised’, because as a social process it can be partly generative of our self-understanding and is inevitably grounded in our ‘histories, products, and capabilities’ (Battaglia, 1995: 77). Battaglia’s work on the practice of yam growing by overseas Trobrianders in their urban gardens in Papua New Guinea is revealing of what she defines as a ‘practical’ or ‘active’ nostalgia. In turn, this is defined as a form of: . . . nostalgia for a sense of future – for an experience, however imaginary, of possessing the means of controlling the future – may function as a powerful force for social reconnection. In permitting creative lapses from dominant realities, it is such a nostalgia that enables or recalls to practice more meaningful patterns of social relationship and self-action. (1995: 78)

Nostalgia for a sense of future offers a useful insight that can be applied to the New Home, New Life production. The structuring of ‘social realism’ within the production displays a purposeful degree of socio-cultural and political vagueness, this being adopted and employed by writers and producers as an active strategy and also a means of maximizing audience appropriations within a diverse ethnic environment, of conforming to BBC policies of impartiality and of presenting a mutually acceptable representation of politics in a complex political landscape (see Skuse, 2002b). But here, in keeping with the style of Afghan political rhetoric, what is not iterated can be as important in semantic terms as that which is, and though the soap opera constituted a reasonably realistic rendering of civil society in its early Mujahideen-era days (1993–4), analysis highlights that realist pretensions could not be maintained in the face of the radical conservative challenge of the Taliban (see Mills, 1991 on Afghan oral culture). Further, certain in-house production struggles reveal it was a representation that certain production staff did not want to be maintained. In the sense defined by Battaglia (1995), the soap opera can be seen to increasingly have represented a lapse from the ‘dominant realities’ of social, political and religious life under the Taliban in favour of a return to an older, more familiar, and ultimately more benign social order rooted in the politics of the Mujahideen era, overlaid with a traditional rendering of the Afghan khanate system of supportive public patrons and willing clients.

Tradition as emancipation Before its recent relocation to Kabul, the New Home, New Life soap opera was produced from offices located in the suburb of University Town, Peshawar, Pakistan, and recorded in the studios of Radio Pakistan. The


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scripting process, then and now, is undertaken in stages, from script development, synopsis writing, to the writing of each individual scene. Each process adds detail and dramatic weight, and though group exchanges do occur between the principally male writers, the sheer volume of writing and need to keep the production in constant creative motion means that most substantive script writing occurs in the home, rather than in the production office. Nonetheless, informal conversations conducted in the congenial atmosphere of the writers’ room, a room reminiscent of an Afghan hujra or derah (a guesthouse characterized by low seating and rich red Turkoman carpets), were often found to centre on the permissible and impermissible, both culturally and politically. Despite such critical concerns, the highly pressurized writing process was generally reactive, in the sense of writers reacting to the editorial lead provided by the production’s senior management staff. Here, the Afghan drama manager and expatriate project manager represent contrasting forces, the Afghan a force for modernity and secularism, the expatriate a force for religious and cultural conservatism. The tension evident between these key informants was played out in the production, as political and cultural negotiation and accommodation. Critically, this ongoing debate was extensively framed by discourses of impartiality and social realism, both of which were used by BBC staff in a colloquial sense, as a tool that legitimated a range of editorial practices and political interpretations. In the context of New Home, New Life, too explicit or accurate a rendering of political realities could not be adequately sanctioned or accommodated without due reference to all seven main Mujahideen political groupings. Here, with reference to the political and cultural sensitivities associated with the production, an informant reveals that: When we talk about impartiality in New Home, New Life it’s not just the impartiality they are talking about in Bush House [the BBC World Service’s headquarters in London], it’s more complicated. You have to be impartial as far as your accent is concerned; you have to be impartial where the language is concerned. You have religion, politics, culture, all sorts of different levels. That’s very important. We could lose everything without impartiality. (Informant, BBC World Service, Peshawar)

However, it needs to be recognized that such generalizations tend to work towards a political effect in that on a broad level the soap opera is also actively engaged in seeking to promote a discrete sense of political and moral expediency within its audience. Beneath this quite obvious role, a more complex and distinct rendering of politics, religion and morality operates, one that in opening a space for the promotion of a range of progressive moral and emancipatory themes also expounds certain socio-cultural,


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political and moral realities, as it simultaneously questioned the politicoreligious conservatism that held sway in contemporary Afghanistan. Edwards (1996) and Roy (1990) both identify the extent to which moral shifts or ‘faults’ have riven contemporary Afghan society, tearing apart traditional mediatory institutions and moral frameworks in the face of war and acute social dislocation. In a sense, New Home, New Life can be thought of as a ‘moral map’, as a guide to managing what is perceived in production terms to be ‘positive change’ (cf. Martín-Barbero, 1995). Yet, much of this so-called ‘positive change’ involves the reinvigoration of tradition, with certain socio-cultural conventions, perceived to be beneficially ‘traditional’, being marked out for strengthening, as others are identified for stealthy erosion. This is most notable with regard to the production’s rendering of politics and its representation of traditional political authority and community leaders, contained loosely within a broader representation of Mujahideen-era society. From the perspective of impartiality guidelines, the non-identification of discrete political groupings meant that some anonymity could be found in the political diversity of Mujahideen politics, of commanders and the new political khans. Here, the moral shifts earlier identified become visible, with the benevolent role of traditional leaders and tempering of negative authoritarian behaviour coming to the fore as the production promotes its own highly negotiated moral and political reading. It is here that nostalgia in processes of representation emerges as an analytical proposition, nostalgia in the sense of the active imagining and remembering of certain moral, political and social alternatives (Battaglia, 1995). In Afghanistan the title khan is conventionally employed to mark out well-respected men in many fields of public service, as well as its more common use as a title for landowners or elders. The term ‘conveys a notion of deploying others in one’s own enterprise’ and ‘signals a man whose authority runs beyond his own household and beyond the general run of householders thereabouts’ (Anderson, 1983: 133). From this perspective, the khan can usefully be perceived as a bridge between opposed Afghan social and political fields, one that has historically been used for personal economic, social and honorific gain. These fields can be identified as qawm (tribe) and gund (faction), atrap (countryside) and shahr (city), yaghistan (land of freedom) and hukumat (place of government) (Anderson, 1983). The traditional khans of Afghanistan can be seen to have functioned at crucial organizational intersections, building social relationships of varying closeness, from malgarey (companions) and nazir (overseer), to the less intimate hamsaya (clients), where relations are based upon business or indebtedness. From a political perspective khans represented continuity and stability, and have been historically enlisted by the state through the


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provision of stipends guaranteeing their cooperation. Historically, the social standing of the traditional khan has been defined with regard to his social conduct, with piety, generosity and wisdom being considered highly positive and honorific characteristics (Azoy, 1982). In a sense, khans were akin to ‘self-financed’ public servants who, in benefiting the community, increase their own wealth, holdings and status in the process (Anderson, 1983). Thus, the traditional khan may be thought of as a type of village organizer of economic and social well-being. State attacks on the perceived feudalism of the khanate system by communist reformers, combined with the gradual undermining of the role and status of traditional khans by younger men ready to forge new ‘outgroup’ ethnic, political and military alliances in the face of the Soviet intervention (1979–89), radically altered the political, religious and moral landscape of Afghanistan (Edwards, 1996; Roy, 1990; Rubin, 1995). This process upset and overturned existing social and political hierarchies and can be perceived as a form of ‘accelerated history’ driven by a specific articulation with modernity in the shape of the proliferation of small arms (cf. Abbink, 2001 on inter-clan conflict in Ethiopia). The new ‘political’ khans were less respectful of age, previous social standing and moral sensibilities, with their alliances often cutting across ethnicities and tribal lineages in pursuit of flows of weaponry and money (Rais, 1994). Such men, termed khans out of community respect for their considerable social power, conventionally had soldiers and weapons at their disposal and were associated with one or other of the seven main Mujahideen political and religious groups. Like the traditional khans that preceded them, they also sought to maximize their own influence, albeit through the application of goal-oriented violence. This violence is collectively held in the social memory of the production’s listenership: . . . many people in our country have been killed on the order of Commanders [new khans]. We wish that our poor people could get rid of them. They kill people for nothing. Eleven members of my family were killed when a rocket landed in our compound when we were celebrating a wedding. For nothing they were killed. Only three survived, apart from me. My uncle lost his leg like Jandad [one of the soap opera’s characters who befell a similar fate] and my cousin lost his hand. (Female informant, Kabul)

When New Home, New Life began its production run in 1993, the political reality it faced was that of the Mujahideen and a country divided into discrete enclaves built on fragile political and ethnic alliances. One of the production’s initial tasks was to problematize violent excesses and present a more socially benevolent and morally infused representation of civil society and of the ‘new’ khans. In a sense, this representation amalgamated new political realities with an older perception of society and that of


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‘traditional’ khans. The redefinition of a familiar moral economy was of critical importance to the writers and most producers, a majority of whom, regardless of political affiliation, found few redeeming qualities in Mujahideen politics or morality. However, for audiences, the maintenance of traditional khans was often expressed in terms of the production’s lack of social realism: . . . in the drama there’s been this dispute on sheyla [common] land near the forest and people are saying that Fateh Khan [one of the production’s khans] shouldn’t encourage other people to get in trouble and create conflict. Nowadays there aren’t many khans and people say this time has passed. (Female informant, Paktia Province)

The political reality to which the production initially alluded was a terrain fragmented by warlordism and personal fiefdoms, though this began to substantively shift following 1994 as talibs (students of religion) emerging from traditional madrassahs (religious schools) began to organize themselves against the Mujahideen groups and remnants of the former communist regime. This process of organization resulted in the formation of the ostensibly Pashtun Taliban students’ movement in the process.3 Despite gains across the Pashtun south and east, where talibs typically went into ‘battle’ with Koran held high and where bloodless capitulation by Mujahideen forces and their subsequent incorporation into the Taliban often followed, the soap opera’s writers and producers were unable and generally unwilling to reflect this new politico-religious reality. This was in spite of simultaneously upholding a discourse pertaining to the ‘social realism’ and perceived authenticity of the production. Many Pashtun listeners questioned the lack of a Taliban presence in the soap opera, with others making reference to the ‘good work’ that they were doing ridding the country of weapons and, to a very large extent, conflict and indiscriminate violence. From this perspective, strict adherence to policies of impartiality were translated by writers and producers in terms of it being ‘safer’ for the soap opera’s representation of politics to remain firmly rooted in the former reality of the new political khans, albeit one tempered by the integration of traditional values and moralities designed to inspire a more progressive political, moral and humanitarian stance. Comparison of the negativity of the production’s new khans with that of listeners’ recollections of past local leaders was found to be commonplace, though inevitably framed with a sense of loss, bitterness and resentment over the social and moral disruption that they caused.4 Informants, as previously mentioned, frequently iterated narratives of loss and suffering associated with the long years of war, and the soap opera routinely sparked cathartic musings over deceased relatives and harsh times:


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. . . it [the soap opera] makes us think about certain events. When we returned from Pakistan one of my relatives was injured in a mine explosion, his foot was very badly hurt. I tied his leg with a piece of cloth [tourniquet] and we took him to the hospital for treatment. The doctors tried to save him, but he died. Now when I listen or hear messages about mines I remember that event and I am filled with gham (sorrow). (Male respondent, Kabul)

Whilst experience of suffering is almost universal, listeners also often found solace in the production’s representation of the traditional qualities associated with khans as a form of nostalgic political stability that was, first and foremost, largely free of violence. Actual political or new khans, on the other hand, were routinely singled out by informants for lacking honour resulting from their frequent transgressions of home, property and women, all of which are synonymous with the Pashtun concept of honour or namus (Atayee, 1979). Such transgressions substantively undermined moral and honorific sensibilities, leading many listeners to castigate certain of the production’s characters for doing the same: . . . Sheroo [a henchman] is a man begherat [without honour], who gets his livelihood from harming others. There are many forms of work in the world and he could do something else. It was enough for him that he was with Haibat Khan [another of the production’s khans] and looted lots of places. But the people of the village have reclaimed these things . . . Once he helped to make a checkpost on the roadside and got lots of money [the collecting of ‘taxes’ by commanders and khans was common]. When Haibat Khan became poor he just went to work for Fateh Khan [another khan] . . . A few years back these things happened in our country. If one person had a job in Kabul, when he was coming to his village during the night a few armed people would go to his house by order of the village commander and take him and nobody would know about his whereabouts. After some time they would have found the dead body in the mountains or far from the village and his family would have lived alone. Now, thank God, such commanders are no longer here because of the Taliban, because no one can own a rifle [the Taliban had collected many of the weapons in the areas they controlled]. Now everyone can move freely in the village. (Male informant, Paktia Province)

For a majority of listeners, the BBC’s rendering of Afghan politics was perceived as nothing less than a fiction and one that was overtly antiTaliban. This is evidenced by the absence of Taliban characters in the production, a refusal to abandon the politics of the Mujahideen era, and the broadcast of women’s voices, something banned under a religious edict issued by the Taliban relating to the seductive influence of women’s voices on male morality, religiosity and the sanctity of national broadcasting. Such


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interpretations are subject to the rules of debate identified earlier by Appadurai, that of authority, plausibility and evidence. Whilst the BBC is widely respected and has significant authority, especially when it comes to news, the plausibility of its political representation often carried little weight when compared against political realities as lived and experienced on a dayto-day basis by listeners. Though this was often found to cause confusion amongst the audience, it was not a problem that significantly undermined the production’s viability as considerable affection was found to reside within the wider audience, particularly for the khans as represented by New Home, New Life, due, in equal parts, to their benevolent social stance and to the comedic esteem in which one of these khans and his overseer (nazir) were collectively held. Though the advent of new social, political and religious realities in the shape and form of the Taliban were identified, lived with and accommodated by listeners, those realities proved to place considerable strains upon both social relations of production and internal structures of impartiality. In terms of the creative demands faced, certain of these new Talibaninspired realities, such as the collection of weapons and reduction of crime, were easily reflected in the stance adopted by the character Shakoor, one of the production’s progressive new political khans. Yet the numerous squabbles, conflicts and intrigues between the production’s other political khans were heard to continue, leading some listeners in Taliban-occupied Afghanistan to query why the movement should have ignored such criminal and clearly dishonourable behaviour. In discussion with a group of talibs in rural Paktia Province, the realism of the production was challenged in an interesting, though not uncommon, way: Tell us where these khans are and we’ll go and deal with them, no one has the right to hold weapons and collect taxes [extract money with menaces] from the people. (Talib, Paktia Province)

Clearly, a conflation of fictive fantasy with reality can be seen to occur in certain instances. In the sense identified by Das (1995) in her study of Indian soap operas, these listeners perceive of the lives of characters as something they can actively engage in or alter. More simply put, it is why political ‘reality’ as lived and experienced by listeners cannot intrude into the fictional arena of soap opera narratives.

Representing and unrepresenting the Taliban The New Home, New Life production is charged with addressing and representing areas perceived by its scriptwriters, producers, consultative advisers and funders to be socially pressing. Many of the production’s


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immediate staff, expert external advisers and funders found it extremely difficult to accommodate emerging Taliban restrictions concerning female emancipation, education or employment. These restrictions were routinely accompanied by the Taliban’s discourse of ‘security’, it frequently being suggested by the movement that once the whole country was in their hands these rights would be returned since they would be able to ensure appropriate levels of public female modesty. This effectively meant the separation of education, health and employment into clearly discernible male and female spheres or the extension of the logic of purdah into the school, hospital and workplace. Without a clear talib presence in the soap opera at village level, it initially fell to traditional but morally negative characters, such as Jabbar Khan, to oppose emancipatory issues: . . . we have a rigid guy [Jabbar Khan] who is opposing the idea of girls’ education. His wife has a problem, but he doesn’t like a male doctor touching her, he wants a female doctor, but at the same time Upper Village doesn’t allow women to go to work, they don’t allow their daughters to go to school to become doctors. And Jabbar Khan himself doesn’t allow this, so tell me, what’s the option? What should Jabbar Khan do in this situation? (Informant, BBC World Service, Peshawar)

Despite such sentiments, the social impact that the Taliban had on both town and countryside between 1994 and 2002, when they were finally removed from power by a US-backed intervention in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, needs to be disaggregated. Indeed, in many Pashtun villages it was recognized by women that it was their immediate male kin who held the key to any social ‘freedoms’ they might be allowed and not the Taliban. Indeed, the public presence of women in mixed-sex village schools or clinics is typically deemed transgressive of purdah. This is not true of many urban areas, where the same cultural conservatism does not hold sway (Knabe, 1977). Here, education, healthcare and employment were previously available to girls and women, though these services and opportunities were curtailed or removed under the Taliban. Despite this, much of the production staff’s concern for rural society was found to be nostalgic – many writers had not been back to Afghanistan in over 10 years – and largely extrapolated from their understanding of what was happening within urban society, where many of their relatives still resided and their memories lay. Their abhorrence of the apparent ‘backwardness’ of the movement resulted in considerable resistance to the idea that a talib-like character should be introduced from whence the moral stance of the Taliban could potentially be manipulated.5 Underlying the production’s representation and promotion of certain political and moral terrains, certain struggles were evident, this being


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typified by the in-house ‘battle’ to include or exclude a talib-like character which was fought out in policy, especially the aforementioned policies of impartiality. Being a Deoband trained ’alim (Muslim Doctor of Law) and having lived within the Pashtun tribal and non-tribal areas of northern Pakistan for many years, the expatriate project manager’s outlook combined a religious orthodoxy and cultural conservatism that was broadly in line with that of the Taliban. However, far from representing a constraint to the production’s ability to address radical social and emancipatory themes, we can perceive the very particular talents and religious training that he brought to the production in terms of a positive, albeit conservative, localizing force. Indeed, the desire to develop culturally appropriate themes of social development, themes that articulated well with village-level understandings of culture, society and Islam, such as advocating the establishment of home-schools for girls living in purdah, could be perceived as both a critical and pragmatic force within the production. This force was countered by the more progressive and liberal-minded Afghan drama manager and by the majority of Afghan scriptwriters, editors and producers, many of whom favoured a more rigid interpretation of BBC policy on impartiality. Though impartiality may be upheld for highly sound and expedient reasons, it was also found to serve less tangible and transparent interests. Here, many of the soap opera’s creative staff favoured a representation of Afghan civil society free of the Taliban and the brand of religious and cultural conservatism that they preached. How, many of them suggested, could they ever return to Kabul and simply accept their daughters could not go to school, university or work for a living, when they could do so before under the communists? If extreme care in representation is defined as a critical factor of the BBC production, we can also see it reflected in the discourse of scriptwriters and producers. All were extremely guarded when it came to discussing politics, preferring their own political leanings to remain opaque, given that real consequence and risks could accrue if they were known beyond the environment of the production office. In a sense, this guarding is normative and a skill that Mills (1991) identifies as critical to Afghan storytellers. She notes that ‘Afghan narrators can fashion complex, oblique, and implicit commentaries about actors and actions in the social world around them out of narratives drawn from a large body of communally familiar material’ (Mills, 1991: 341). Obliqueness of oral narrative emerges as the key ‘rhetorical technique’, criticism is always implicit and getting the message is the job of the audience rather than the orator. From this perspective what is not said is as important as what is. Therefore, not representing the Taliban can be translated as a direct statement about the collective values held by the production’s writers and producers. Such obliqueness is further overlaid by oblique justifications for opposition against the Taliban and for


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the Afghan staff opinion coalesced around the Taliban’s broad abuse of power and conservatism, which in turn reveals their liberal leanings: . . . I think that that is the characteristic of an intellectual, because if you’re not critical of ruling powers who is going to correct that power? So I think that’s our characteristic, but I don’t think we’re pro-Taliban or anti-Taliban. I don’t deny that some might be against or some might be in favour, but I don’t say all are against. (Informant, BBC World Service, Peshawar)

Despite concerns over the kind of example the introduction of a talib-like character might set, a clear ‘authority’ figure vaguely located in the nearby urban district centre, near to the soap opera’s village context, was subsequently introduced. This was under extreme pressure from the expatriate project manager who favoured a more accurate social representation in response to developing military events within Afghanistan and the realization that the Taliban had become a significant national military and political entity. With the decision made, in-house politicking began in earnest, as reflected in the sentiment of the drama manager: The talib has come but I’m trying to get rid of him. Initially he came with a lot of good things like collecting weapons and bringing security and things like that. But we have to be realistic, so I added these two other ingredients there to complete the phenomenon. One of them was girls’ education and one was women’s employment. Now, since we don’t know what will happen three months later, I am a bit sceptical about covering this phenomenon in the drama and I’m tempted to get rid of him. Because I don’t really know what to do with this phenomenon, is it a good or a bad phenomenon? I don’t know, I can’t decide. (Informant, BBC World Service, Peshawar)

Explicit in this statement is the problem of the three-month time lag between the occurrence of ‘real’ or newsworthy events and their representation in the soap opera. Since political and military positions in Afghanistan have been historically prone to quick collapse, the production has tended to be wary of replicating such events too closely. However, the production reached a point at which its representation could no longer uphold the non-inclusion of a talib character, despite the sentiments of the Afghan writers and producers. Though ultimately forced to yield to developing social realities, the inclusion of a talib character led to a clear dilemma for producers, one that necessitated a representational balancing act between certain moral traits deemed to be positive and those deemed to be negative. This balancing act is clearly reflected in the sentiment of listeners, especially female listeners, chiefly concerned over their children’s lack of educational possibilities. Thus, the inclusion of the talib-like character and the promotion of talib-esque themes through certain of the production’s


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negative moral guides immediately stirred a response within the audience, not all of it negative: Mirak [a minor character in the production] says that the new chief of the district cuts thieves’ hands off. I think this is good work because two or three years back there were so many thieves that you couldn’t sleep at night. We were always afraid they would come and loot our house . . . Now all these thieves and killings have stopped. Now all of the people live in security, but stopping women working and girls going to school makes us anxious, but we always hear from the Taliban that when the situation becomes normal they will allow it, then we become happy and think of our small daughters and hope they will learn something in the future. (Female respondent, Paktia Province)

Within the rural female audience the Taliban were often referred to as ‘brothers’, this representing a mark of affection and appreciation for the very real security dividend they brought to many areas. However, such sentiments were routinely tinged with women’s concerns voiced over education, especially by those who had moved from the cities to villages in order to escape conflict. For those with no knowledge of city life, education represents a dream that is only ‘known’ through the experience of others. In a sense, the moral dilemma structured in production articulates well with the aspirations of rural female listeners, and particularly so with the sentiments of urban listeners who have been more acutely affected by the rule of the Taliban. Though only ever a minor presence, the talib character quickly receded into obscurity and disappeared, with the dominant reality of the production’s representation of politics re-emerging as that of the ‘political’ khan, albeit refracted through the prism of underlying Taliban social realities and socially benevolent traditional khan.

Conclusion In an example of the skill with which Afghans undertake factional politicking, the negotiation and ultimate denial of Taliban political realties constituted an act of manipulation of BBC policy, infused with a nostalgic and benevolent rendering of Afghan politics that stood, in terms of what it didn’t represent, as a critique of the Taliban and their conservatism.6 In doing so, New Home, New Life’s scriptwriters and producers kept alive an alternative political vision that though traditional was at the same time radical given the political ascendancy and domination of the Taliban at the time. For audiences, the production was more overtly nostalgic, and here we can see the separation of what Battaglia (1995) terms ‘nostalgia for a sense of future’ from nostalgia as a reminiscence of past times. What is


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significant is that unlike audiences, scriptwriters and producers are not subject to the same context-bound rules concerning the plausibility and evidence contained within their historico-political interpretations. Because of this they can generate a radical interpretation of politics that denies social reality and in the process maintains a space for individual and collective freedom in the shape and form of a political alternative. Whilst the focus within much media-related research has tended to locate resistance as a form of emancipation or social and political action, in the sense defined by Gramsci (1994), Fabian’s argument draws us back to the important realization that freedom, as a quality of experience or for that matter resistance, may be fundamentally transitory. He notes that: . . . there can never be freedom as a state of grace, permanent and continuous. As a quality of the process of human self-realization, freedom cannot be anything but contestatory and discontinuous or precarious. Freedom, in dialectical terms, comes in moments. (Fabian, 1998: 21)

This can be recast. Both active and passive nostalgia, in a sense, are generative of moments of freedom that, for both media producers and consumers, quite fittingly come in soap opera episodes.

Notes 1

2

3

Fieldwork was facilitated with funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council and undertaken between late 1996 and early 1998 at both the BBC’s Peshawar-based production centre in Pakistan and at field sites in Afghanistan, most notably the cities of Kabul and Jalalabad. Supporting data from rural areas was derived from regular visits to nearby villages and from locally situated field assistants, chiefly women, who recorded the daily conversations that occurred concerning the soap opera in their own homes and villages. This produced data of varying quality, but this strategy was deemed necessary as a means of overcoming barriers to accessing female informants and obtaining longer-term situational data in areas that were not generally safe to reside in. In work on conflict in the Horn of Africa, both Allen (1989) and James (1988) point to the idea of a ‘cultural archive’, a resource, from which society and community can be reconstructed in the face of seeming social disintegration. Maley (1998), unlike many other commentaries discussing the rise of the Taliban movement, contends they did not simply materialize on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Rather, they stem from a religious tradition, the roots of which can be traced to the conservative Deobandi school of Sunni Muslim Islamic education and nearby politicized madrassahs across


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Afghanistan’s southern border in Pakistan that continue to provide Islamic education. Within Afghanistan, local and loosely organized groups of talibs have always been present. Maley points to references gleaned from the writing of Winston Churchill, who in 1898 noted the presence of ‘wandering Talib-ul-ilms’, and to more recent commentators who were seen to be fighting amongst Mujahideen forces in the mid-1980s during the height of the conflict. Taking the province of Paktia and the area surrounding Khost town as an example, by 1991 the Jamiat-e Tulaba of Khost had formed, though this organization is pre-dated by eight organizations that operated at a tribal level and represented groups of talibs drawn from such Pashtun tribes as Mengal, Zadran and Ahmadzai. Though the ground-force of the coming Taliban movement can be seen to have already been in place prior to its establishment, the impetus for the mass organization of talib groups appears to stem from modest beginnings. Davis (1998) notes that according to ‘official’ Taliban history the movement can be traced to a madrassah in Singesar village in Maiwand district, Kandahar Province. By mid-1994 Mullah Mohammad Omar, the organization’s founder, whose contemporary elevation to Afghanistan’s Amir (Defender of the Faith) belies his humble beginnings at this simple village madrassah, had become ‘incensed by the excesses of predatory Mujahideen bands on the provincial highways where arbitrary “taxation”, robbery and rape had become a depressing norm’ (Davis, 1998: 43). This led to the taking-up of arms against these groups and the ‘clearing-out’ of ‘criminals’ along the main Kandahar-Herat highway. Following this event, links with the Mujahideen Rabbani government in Kabul and members of the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) began to form, with organizational and military assistance being subsequently provided, with financial aid stemming from Saudi Arabia (Davis, 1998). Maley rightly points to the continuities and fluidity in Afghan politics, a fluidity that has allowed members of Mujahideen groups, as well as reformed Khalqi (Pashtun) communists, to enter the Taliban fold. He notes that the majority of the current Taliban leadership is predominantly drawn from ex-members of Mujahideen groups, most notably of Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi’s Harakat-e Inqelab-e Islami party, a conservative religious party favoured by clerics who had little time for alternative Islamist parties with their socialist leanings and their tight party organization. Despite this, the Taliban has become a formidable political and military organization in its own right, one that has swept over two-thirds of the country with the equal application of moral certitude, liberal financial incentives to military opponents and bitterly fought military campaigns. The Taliban currently hold the capital Kabul, but continue to exercise power from their Kandahar stronghold, from where edicts on appropriate virtues and morality frequently emanate. However, such edicts are not empty threats and are policed by the widely feared Amr


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4

5 6

bil-maroo wa Nahi az-Munkir (The Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice). The actions of this department are nowhere more acutely felt than in the capital Kabul, where historical associations are made between periods of modernization and social liberalism and the moral conduct of Kabul’s inhabitants. Whilst the likes of Knabe (1977) question the extent to which Kabul women, for example, were free to follow their own destinies, many of the talibs emanating from the mass of southern Afghan villages perceive of Kabul and its inhabitants as ‘Godless’, corrupt and immoral. The term gilam jam, which literally means one who puts things in a kilim, is colloquially used to identify those Mujahideen commanders who were involved in systematic looting or who were ex-communists, and was found to frequently be invoked. The term is also employed in the sense of the educated secular Kabulis and, though often derogatory, can be used in a highly familiar manner to rib a close friend or acquaintance. Indeed, within production, this or that member of staff would occasionally be referred to as the ‘number one gilam jam in the office’, in the sense that they favoured a progressive and liberal political and religious outlook. The impetus for ‘inclusion’ grew steadily as a series of military advances in the north of the country threatened a totalitarian Taliban state. The postscript to this particular production representational struggle was the removal of the expatriate project manager in favour of the Afghan drama manager. The production is now completely staffed by Afghan nationals.

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