Breakthrough film shows softer side of Chaman
By Shazad Ali
Wednesday, 17 Jun, 2009 | 10:45 PM PST |

Players from Afghan Football Club and KRL Islamabad fight for the ball as a huge crowd looks on in Chaman — APP photo.

SPORT
Lyari footballers turn to life of crime

MEDIA GALLERY
Campeones!

KARACHI: Cutting through the fog of terrorism enveloping the region, a group of amateurs screened a documentary entited ‘The Last Refuge of Afghans’ which brought a message of peace and prosperity through football on Wednesday.

‘There is so much anarchy and fighting in Pakistan and the region, but we believe that peace can brought through football. And for that, town of Chaman in Balochistan and its football-loving people are best example.’

‘The theme of this movie was [to] fight as hard [as] people want to, but on the field of football,’ the producer of the documentary Khalid Hasan Khan told Dawn.com at Goethe-Institut Pakistan .

According to Khalid, Chaman was perfect example of showing how to live peacefully with tolerance for other religions and ideas.

Recollecting his observations during filming, the producer said while Pashtuns were known as feared tribal warriors always brandishing weapons, locals in Chaman were quite different.

‘There are so many things about people of Chaman. But to sum up I truly believe they are quite different to the people in the north. They (Chaman locals) are peaceful and peace-loving people unlike other Pashtun tribes. There are misconceptions about the area,’ he said.

The 20-minute documentary directed by M. Wasim, describes how team members from Pakistan ’s Afghan Club from Chaman were caught by the Taliban a few years ago while playing a match against a local outfit. The Taliban shaved the heads of the Pakistani players for playing in an ‘un-Islamic dress’ (shorts) and then deported.

However, Mohammad Saeed, the secretary of the Balochistan Football Association (BFA) claimed in the documentary that later local politicians apologized for the incident. The BFA official claimed that it was actually rival club members who were involved not the Taliban.

‘You see there was no animosity or agitation among the people of Chaman for the Afghans or Taliban across the border even after the incident. And this shows how tolerant they are,’ said Khalid.

The producer said the title of the film (The Last Refuge of the Afghans) came about since the people of Chaman also called themselves Afghans.

‘Chaman has abundant talent in soccer and we have players in our national team from this area. We want to show that it is only football which is now the last refuge for Afghans which means all Pashtuns either from NWFP, Fata, Balochistan or Afghans who have migrated from Afghanistan to Chaman.’

Abdul Qayyum Khadakoo, founding member of Afghan Club, argued that Chaman had always been a peaceful region with people displaying both tolerance and a deep love of football.

‘I agree that Afghans who have migrated from Afghanistan wanted to interfere in our lives.. But we told them in clear terms that please do not interfere in our system. They (Afghans) dominate our businesses but we don’t have any objection. We live in complete harmony,’ he told a jam-packed audience..

Qayyum says unlike other tribal areas, people in Chaman do not display weapons, nor is it likely to find drug peddlers or drug addicts on the streets.

‘Chaman has its own importance. Although there is an impact on the region because of geo-political situation, Chaman is a channel for supplies for the German and other (Nato) troops into Afghanistan . This shows how peaceful is the town,’ he claimed.

Former Balochistan sports minister Lt-Col Younis Changezi lamented that although there was huge soccer talent in Chaman, there was hardly facilities for the sport.

‘We have given Pakistan football top players from Chaman, but there are meager funds, lack of infrastructure and facilities. I can assure that if given proper attention Chaman and the province can produce top class players.’

Dr. Markus Litz, the director of the Goethe-Institute Pakistan also spoke while presenting welcome speech.

Not many would take the trouble of going out to far off places in search of talent, interest of people and try to know about their life style. Of all places, Lyari was chosen by an enthusiast, equipped with foreign education and training to look for something that has not been highlighted to date, and is of interest to majority of people, and also there is an story behind it.

It is with commitment and determination that comes from foreign media exposure that that this enthusiast tried out ‘what he has learned’ in foreign lands, where people and their interest is not only respected but also regarded as of prime importance in the nation building process.

An Early Sunset is a short documentary on the subject of soccer in Lyari; that had been the nucleus of football in the Southeast Asia. The documentary pays tribute to the legends of Lyari who once ruled the subcontinent’s soccer. While at the same time documentary aims at the present day problems of young footballers like Imran Abdullah who is uncertain about his professional career in the future.

The short documentary was shot in a single day that features interviews of Ali Nawaz Baloch, the footballer with presidential pride of performance, Ahmed Jan, former FIFA referee, Nasir Karim, Chairman South Football Association, Tariq Lutfi, former Pakistan National soccer Team Coach etc.

The soccer documentary was presented to a test audience of the footballers of Lyari, the spectators along with the chief guest of the documentary screening Mr. Rafique Engineer, Provincial Minister for Katchi Abadis Sindh not only appreciated the documentary makers for their passion of the game but also announced a sum of Rs. 10,000 for the budding footballer Imran, featuring in An Early Sunset; who once was forced to work in a repair shop thanks to financial constraints.

It is interesting that Lyari in the past was connecting three big cities of the subcontinent; Calcutta , Dhaka and Karachi through the power of football. Even the film stars of the region like Dilip Kumar, Madhubala and Nadeem were great admirers of soccer players of Lyari. The then Indian Prime Minister Nehru had photographs with Mohammad Omer who is known as the father of Lyari football. The documentary also shows that Lyari turns into a little Brazil during the FIFA soccer world cup as the flags of the Latin American country are seen in the houses supporting the Brazilian soccer squad. Lyari footballers are similar to Brazilian peers not only in physical sense but in playing style too.

The documentary is an effort purely volunteered by the people who wanted to highlight the prime sport of Lyari. The documentary is in English with the voice over by Mohammad Ali. The documentary is brilliantly edited by Jehangir Hanif and produced by Khalid Hasan Khan.

Sadly, the film comes nowhere close to Charles last effort, Borat. It’s only sporadically funny and relies mostly on cuts to archival footage and old campy movies about religion for its gags. Meanwhile, the effort feels very much cobbled together, lazily constructed(boom mikes and second cameras can be spotted in many of the shots), and riddled with all kinds of biases and stereotypes that cynically defeats the film’s essential call for a more rational approach to faith-based thought.

Charles and Bill Maher travel all over the world to try to come to terms with the power, prevalence, and irrationality of religion. They manage to locate a seemingly infinite number of freaks, extremists, and closeted homosexuals and proceed to make them look stupid, not so difficult. Yet, if these people don’t sufficiently embarrass themselves, then Charles mocks them with text that appears below their comments, sound effects that ridicules them(a mean lady gets a a witch’s cackle), and cuts that reduce them to the moronic. There isn’t much space here, ironically, for a personal response, or a moment to let something sink in; the cuts come at furious, demanding, and pejorative pace and sequence.

This is done not just for comic effect, where it often fails save in the purely sophomoric dimension, but has a polemical intent that favors Charles’ overt biases and facile, but semi-racist, connections. For example, at one point, a man in charge of a religious theme park where they reenact scenes of the crucifiction, says many visitors come from far away, even the Gaza Strip. As soon as the words come out of the man’s mouth, Charles cuts to a gun-wielding Arab in a mask. In fact, Charles projects dozens of images violent Arabs(welcome to Hollywood!) using archival footage to further the claim, however unexplored in the film, that Islam is an inherently violent religion, a claim often made by right-wing idealogues. Charles and Maher ignore the political dimension as an explanatory variable in violence, blame it on religion, and take a decidly simplistic view of terrorism in the process, ignoring class and social justice and imperial humiliations as possible causes for violence. There is no mention of state-based violence by Christian and Jewish armies that use religion as their moral justification. While I realize that such a scope may be difficult in such a forum, Charles and Maher appear to want us to take their arguments seriously and question our assumptions about religion, while neither has bothered to do the same by shamelessly taking the low road and falling in line to the media’s ignoble history of projecting violent images of Arabs and Muslims when they bother to show them at all(Read Shaheen’s “Reel Arabs”). If this had some comic purpose, it might be understood, but here, it comes off like propaganda of a nasty and ignorant order. (They even roll out Yassir Arafat, an avowed Arab secularist, in a montage of religious extremists who encourage violence)

It’s a shame that Charles relied so heavily on archival footage and sound effects for comic effect. In Borat, he plays it closer to the vest and allows Sascha Cohen to carry the film. Perhaps his cinematic sleights of hand were a necessity in the editing room since there wasn’t enough quality footage. Still, Charles stated after the film that he wants to release 15 hours of film on t.v. that ended up on the cutting room floor in thirty minute increments. I would recommend the same for this shoddy and half-ass effort, which would be much better suited to television, preferably the higher numbers in the cable universe. It’s a shame because this is a film a really wanted to like. The hallelujeuh chorus on the left has lately gotten so loud and uniform, I really wish we could sing a new tune or two, a little less cynically perhaps.