Son of a Lion

Somewhere between Peshawar and Gilgit, in the Northwest Frontier Province

I have just watched a very pleasant film.

Son of a Lion is set in the North West Frontier Provinces of Pakistan, principally in the towns of Darra Adam Khel and Peshawar. The former is a town which lives almost completely from the earning of the production and selling of weaponry, a fact mentioned any time the town's name appears.

There is much kudos in the backpacking world for having visited the Darra Adam Khel, though it's about as dangerous as getting on a bus with a lot of hirsute men in Peshawar and then alighting with them an hour or so later. Sure, it has the look and feel of a frontier town, but the Pakistanis are so friendly that it's not really a hair-raising experience.

Regardless of this, the film is a lovely peek into the lives of the Pashtun people in a distinctly beautiful region of the world. What is admirable about this production is that it happened. I cannot fathom the organisational skills needed to produce such a film, so from that perspective I think the film crew achieved a real success.

I imagine that there are few films available to Westerners that allow us insight into the lives of people in this region of the world. For that reason alone the film is worth viewing, its narrative as slow-paced and languid as the daily life of the people it captures. I suppose I watched it more as a documentary than a film; my interest was held by memories that came flooding back of one of the most spectacular parts of my travels in one of the planet’s most misunderstood regions.

The film's worth a look if you have the opportunity.

Peshawar

Peshawar is a frontier town, capital of the North West Frontier Provinces (NWFP). The NWFP share much of its western border with the even more syllabic-challengingly named Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a thin strip of terrain nestled among gnarled mountains, and an area over which the Pakistan government holds only nominal control. Peshawar lies close to the fabled Khyber Pass, and the borders of Afghanistan can be reached by car in about one hour.

For readers of newspapers who can no longer follow the almost-daily explosions and attacks ripping apart this part of the world, the latest car bomb three days ago in Peshawar just seems but another event in a long string of lawlessness that undermines Pakistan.

The bomb was shockingly effective. While the dust floats back down onto the street and pavements of Meena Bazaar, there are now over one hundred confirmed casualties and two hundred injured. After a string of attacks in recent weeks as the Pakistani army leads an assault against Taliban militants in the FATA South Waziristan Agency, this city of three million must be living in constant fear.

According to the BBC, Hakimullah Meshud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, the car bomb was the work of US and foreign security agencies. Hilary Clinton, in a speech delivered in Lahore, mentioned the women and child victims of the horrific blast. Regardless of age or gender of the dead, and irrespective of the Meshud’s words, the Taliban has to be removed. No serious secularist, here or in Pakistan, can trust the insane fundamentalist ideology of a savage bunch of cowardly murders.

The Taliban must be eradicated. With or without hard evidence to find the instigators of the Peshawar car bomb, the terror has got to stop. It’s going to be a long haul, and that the American Secretary of State pledging US$ 45 million towards higher education in Pakistan, it’s a very small step in the right direction.

Obama has iterated his desire to strengthen relations with a nation that, strategically, remains of vital importance in the region. Let’s just hope not a rupee of that foreign aid goes into the hand of religious teachers, but to secular learning based on humanist principles. The Taliban must be defeated and in the long struggle to do so it’s important that the opposing side worries less about being on the right side of some supernatural god and more about preserving values common to all of humankind.