Taliban are imposing their view that music, singing and other such arts are un-Islamic.— AP/File Photo

PESHAWAR Singer Sardar Yousafzai and his band were driving from a wedding gig when the gunmen burst onto the road, firing without warning.

Yousafzai survived, but a harmonium player died and four others were wounded. He is now in hiding the latest of many entertainers whose lives and livelihoods face an escalating threat from Taliban-led militants in northwest Pakistan.

'I am so scared,' said Yousafzai, who met with The Associated Press in Peshawar, the region's main city. 'I cant go home or to any performance.'

As Taliban militants gain a stronger hold in this region of Pakistan, they are imposing their view that music, singing and other such arts are un-Islamic. Several entertainers have been kidnapped or killed, while many others have fled, quit or watched their work opportunities dwindle.

Criminal gangs seeking to extort money are also suspected of involvement as overall security deteriorates.

The campaign has further weakened a once-thriving cultural scene, despite hopes for a comeback after a secular party defeated an Islamist coalition in elections last year.

The austerity also runs contrary to a rich tradition of music, dance, singing and poetry among the Pashtuns, the ethnic group that is dominant both in the area and in the Taliban.

'What can I do?' asked Zardad Khan, a popular 4-foot-2-inch comedic actor who has received several telephone threats. 'I'm trying to bring smiles to the society and the people, but my life is getting more miserable with each passing day.'

Khan said he used to have roles in five or six movies a month. But in the last four months, he's had only one and he had to travel to Lahore for production because its too unsafe to film in Peshawar.

'If we get killed, no one cares,' he said.

In the northwest's Swat Valley, a one-time tourist haven, a female dancer was shot dead in early January after insurgents lured her out by pretending to be customers.

They displayed her body in a public square, her ankle bells on her chest, said a security official who sought anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation there.

There are also signs the cultural assault is spreading. In the eastern city of Lahore, for instance, a handful of small bombs have detonated near theaters and a cultural complex in recent months, spurring fears of a 'Talibanisation' of a cultural center.

'This menace has now creeped so widely into the society that I do not think that the government will be able to control all this,' said Syed Aqil Shah, the provincial minister for culture in the northwest.

'I do not know as to where to begin or where it's going to end.'

In 2002, a pro-Taliban coalition came to power in the North West Frontier Province on a wave of voter anger over the US invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. The coalition banned music on public buses, clamped down on entertainment festivals and removed movie billboards with pictures of scantily clad women.

Last year, voters tossed out the Islamists, bringing in a secular-minded leadership, but by then the militancy had dug deep in the frontier region. It had spread well beyond the tribal areas into cities such as Peshawar and other areas supposedly under full government control.

'The entertainer, whether singer or comedian or another sort, they're in trouble, and they don't get any support from the state,' said Shah Jehan, a professor at the University of Peshawar who has studied the relationship between culture and religion.

Under the previous government, singer Gulzar Alam said he was harassed by authorities and beaten by police for performing at a wedding. He and his family moved to the southwest city of Quetta, but returned to Peshawar in 2008 at the request of the new secular leadership.

Late last year, he started to get threatening phone calls.

'They would tell me about my children's school schedules. They would tell me that they have an agenda of killing all those doing anti-Islamic activities,' Alam said. In January, he shifted his family to the southern city of Karachi.

The most widely publicised case is that of Haroon Bacha, one of the northwest's best-known singers, who is now seeking asylum in the United States after receiving threats.

Another entertainer, comedian Alamzeb Mujahid, was reportedly kidnapped by militants for a few days in January. Soon after being freed, Mujahid held a brief press conference to announce he was abandoning show business to preach Islam.

He would not answer questions about his captors or even confirm what happened, and refused several interview requests from the AP.

Other artists still in the region are struggling to find work.

The militants have also blown up scores of shops selling movies and music in recent years. One bomb exploded in front of a shop belonging to Musafir Khan, who is also a well-known producer in Peshawar.