Musicians in Pakistan's northwest long for better times

By Kamran Haider

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Zareen Gul sits on the floor of his small recording studio in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and complains that he feels like a criminal for wanting to make music.

A dusty computer and several recording machines are stacked on racks in his two-room Shama Recording Studio in the city's busy Khyber Bazaar but nothing is switched on.

Gul, who records pop songs in the Pashto language, moved to Peshawar two years ago from his home of Bannu in North West Frontier Province after Islamist militants started bombing music shops and threatened to blow up his studio.

Like Afghanistan's hardline Taliban, the militants see music as un-Islamic.

But for Gul, things have not been much better in Peshawar, capital of the province that has been ruled by conservative religious parties sympathetic to the Taliban for the past five years.

The religious parties banned music on public transport and concerts at the Nishtar Hall, Peshawar's only theatre.

They also pressed landlords to evict musicians and singers from the Dabgari neighborhood in Peshawar's old city, where they have lived for generations, and turned a blind eye to militant attacks on music shops, musicians say.

"We're working like criminals," Gul says as he sips green tea, referring to an air of repression musicians have felt under the religious parties.