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Fawad Andarabi: Taliban drag folk singer out of home, shoot him in the head

Fawad Andarabi’s death comes in the wake of the Taliban announcing that music will not be allowed in public

In Afghanistan's Baghlan province, reports said, a Taliban fighter shot and killed an Afghan folk singer called Fawad Andarabi. In the aftermath of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, news of violence and deaths has been a regular affair. The fundamentalist group’s resurgence has brought about questions of their orthodoxy and violence. And the Taliban has made claims to be more moderate than their previous reign.

In the group’s first press conference, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid promised amnesty for Afghans, that women would have rights “within Islamic law,” and that the group’s days of harboring terrorists were over. "We assure you that nobody will go to their doors to ask why they helped," Mujahid promised. Mujahid also said that the media would be able to operate independently while emphasizing that reporters "should not work against national values."

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But reports from the country paint a different picture. According to Sami Mahdi, a journalist and Kabul University lecturer, “Fawad Andarabi, a local artist, was dragged out of his home yesterday and killed by the Taliban in Kishnabad village of Andarab. He was a famous folk singer in the valley. His son has confirmed the incident.” The Twitter account Ihtesham Afghan reported, “In Kandahar, the Taliban have stopped women from being in tv broadcasts on and radio. Fawad Andarabi, a local Andarabi singer, was killed by the Taliban. They have no humanity and no mercy in their hearts. They only know how to kill people.”

Andarabi was a famous folk singer in the valley located in the northern province of the country, which is around 100 kilometers from the capital Kabul. The province has an ethnically diverse population that includes Tajiks, Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Tartars. 

As per the Associated Press, the Baghlan province valley has seen upheaval since the Taliban takeover, with some districts in the area coming under the control of militia fighters opposed to the Taliban rule. The neighboring Panjshir in the Hindu Kush remains the only one of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces not under the Taliban's control.

Andarabi's son Jawad Andarabi told the Associated Press that this was not the first time that the Taliban had come to their house. The Taliban previously came out to Andarabi's home and searched it, and even drank tea with the musician, Jawad said. The singer was shot in the head on the farm. “He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people,” Jawad said. “They shot him in the head on the farm.” He also said that he wanted justice and that a local Taliban council promised to punish his father’s killer. Mujahid told the Associated Press that the incident would be investigated.

Andarabi reportedly played the ghichak, a bowed lute, and sang traditional songs about his birthplace, his people, and Afghanistan as a whole. Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International, decried the killing. “There is mounting evidence that the Taliban of 2021 is the same as the intolerant, violent, repressive Taliban of 2001,” she said. “Twenty years later. Nothing has changed on that front.”

Andarabi’s death comes in the wake of reports that in his first sit-down interview with a Western media outlet since the Taliban took full control of Afghanistan, Mujahid said that while he sought to convey a much more tolerant image of the Taliban, music will not be allowed in public. “Music is forbidden in Islam,” he said, “but we’re hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them.”

"The students are all fearful and concerned. They clearly understand that if they return to the school, they might face consequences or be punished for what they've been doing," the Afghanistan National Institute of Music's founder and director, Dr Ahmad Sarmast, told the BBC. He said some students had returned their instruments to the school when the Taliban descended on the city.