The bullet-riddled bus in Kalat, its shattered windows lit by dawn, did more than end three lives. It tore through an already fragile cultural memory.
These were musicians en route to a wedding, carrying harmoniums, not weapons. However, in Balochistan, where silence is often imposed rather than chosen, their visibility marked them for death.
We have seen this before. In 2009, Shabana, a young dancer in Swat, was dragged to Mingora’s Khooni Chowk and executed by militants bent on erasing public performance. Later, in 2016, Amjad Sabri was gunned down in Karachi: his assassination was not only a personal tragedy but an attack on qawwali itself.
Since 2007, the heart-wrenching extremist wave has claimed more than a dozen artists: singers like Ghazala Javed, folk poets in Balochistan, and countless unnamed female performers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Easy to threaten, easier to kill.
Balochistan’s cultural decline is particularly stark. Folk singers and poets either disappear, are shot, or flee. Kill-and-dump operations leave families broken and questions unanswered.
Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti called the Kalat killings “a direct strike on Pakistan’s cultural soul.” But the state’s response has been limited to statements. No coordinated security plan has been introduced. For militants, culture is a battlefield, and we allow them to fight on it unchallenged.
Each silenced voice chips away at the nation’s identity. Have we forgotten how the Pashto theatre scene in Peshawar collapsed under militant threat, only to revive cautiously once the ground was retaken? Without active protection, public art risks another retreat, and with it, a deepening cultural void.
This is not just terrorism. It is cultural warfare. And we are ceding ground.
The state must treat artists not as fringe beneficiaries of policy, but as frontline defenders of pluralism. Yes, we need security details for touring musicians and a real investment in cultural infrastructure.
More urgently, we need a government that signals, unequivocally, that there will be no impunity for anyone who dares to terrorise those who give this country its voice. Because if Pakistan cannot defend its storytellers, it has already lost the story.
