The beat to which the youth prance and swirl is only a dhol or a dafli, but could it be a war drum, martial music? The attanr, the Pashtun folk dance, is just a dance, but could it be a formation of ranks, an expression of solidarity?

The verse only poetry, a song a song. But no more do they extol aspects of physical love. The land and the people are the new beloved.

In the Pak-Afghan borderlands, culture is a battlefield. It has been so for 35 years now, ever since the region caught fire in the wake of Afghan jihad.

Is it any wonder that one of the soldiers on this battleground is an Afghan youth? His name is Asad Hamid Attar and he is unarmed. Turned out in traditional red Afghan-Turkmen chapan and a shaggy wool telpak cap, the 21-year-old from Faryab is fighting conflict by celebrating life.

“After nearly 35 years of war, the Afghan people are still alive and strong,” says Asad, a geeky bespectacled ambassador of his Turkmen culture, surrounded by Afghan youth at the Pak-Afghan Peoples’ Forum (PAPF) at the Nishtar Hall in Peshawar. “We came to the Forum to tell the world and the United Nations that Pak-Afghan relations are not subject to the whims of armies and governments but the people’s desire for peace.”

This desire for peace underpinned the speeches and activities at the Forum last weekend where both Afghan and Pakistani delegates upheld cultural expression as a manifestation of identity in their multicultural, multinational milieus. Decades of war and terror have asphyxiated cultures and civil societies in the two countries, said speakers at the Forum, making room for more conflict. All across the land, identities have been reduced to ghosts. In Pakistan alone, nations, cultures and languages on the margins of mainstream are losing substance, turning diaphanous for want of revival and protection. Their stock, no matter how resilient, has been chipped to the bone.

As proof, the Pakistani participants at the Forum pointed to the borderlands: in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata, musicians grew beards, women on billboards had faces smudged black and Nishtar Hall, Peshawar city’s only cultural centre, grew cobwebs.

“Our culture is our fort against forces bent on destroying our identity and sense of self,” says Dr Syed Alam Mehsud, who leads the Pakhtunkhwa Ulasi Tehreek. “Only by rebuilding what they destroy can we really hope to defeat these forces. We now have an annual day — Sept 23 — to celebrate Afghan cultural identity all over the world.”

The Afghans think no differently. Among the participants at the Forum is the ageing academic Dr Mohammad Ghous Hakimi, a professor of chemistry from Kabul. “Afghans are born in war, they die in war,” says Dr Hakimi, with the characteristic resignation of a world-weary scholar. “We are told that Pakistan is bad — just look at how education prospers in Islamabad while they blow up our schools. You are told that Afghans are belligerent. We keep fighting while others win. Fears and misunderstandings can be dispelled when people meet because historical identities and bonds are stronger than suspicions.”

It was perhaps in keeping with these common cross-border identities that the Forum leaned heavily towards the Pashtun expression of culture. There were many Khans there, turbaned and chapaned. And naturally, they were not terrorists — rather nationalists, offended that their culture was killed and hijacked by elements that did not represent them or their way of life.

Although the regional conflict has its locus in the Pashtun territories along the border, they, by no means, are the only victims of war. Equally robbed of the joy of living are other ethnic groups inhabiting the border regions. In recognition of their disparate identities, the Forum brought together Hazara, Hindku, Seraiki, Turkmen and Chitrali representatives who introduced the participants to their cultures.

“We have all these groups living here that make our culture rich,” says Alamzeb Mandanr, chairperson of the Pakistan chapter of the PAPF. “We own them. They are our brotherhood.” Beyond culture, the Forum plans to take the people-to-people interaction to trade, education, health, transfer of technology and human rights. “Every day, four planes full of Afghans leave for India to seek health care,” said Alamzeb. “Why can’t they come here when we are closer? We are planning to set up facilitation points on both sides of the border to help Afghan patients get proper attention and care when they come to Pakistan.”

Out in the hall, there are stalls showcasing artefacts made by Afghan refugees, among others. One of them is Abdul Malook, an Afghan carpet dealer with a shop in the old city. “Such gatherings would help people appreciate their culture and craft,” says Malook, the 35-year-old Pashtun from Nangarhar. “They elevate our status as a nation in the eyes of the world.”

In a region where rebranding local culture as confrontational and radical serves vested interests, cross-border bonhomie has been rare due to insecurity, leaving little room for voices to deny or dilute distorted impressions, manipulated narratives. Hearing the youth — for it is largely a show of cross-border and cross-cultural camaraderie on the part of youth — and the elderly speak of culture as the last bastion for reassertion of true identities, it is easy to construe the proceedings as a show of force, of defiance.

There couldn’t have been anything more natural, more organic than this convergence around a common culture, a fact reflected in the opinion of the Afghan woman poet Nizakat Jaidi from Laghman: “Women are mothers and sisters that introduce children to culture in the cradle. We create it, we keep it alive. If women were oppressed in Afghan culture, as the world likes to believe, I wouldn’t be standing here before you.”

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2014