SONS OF HAJI OMAR

RA90 Col. 58 mins.
Made by: Timothy Asch, Asen Balikci, David Newman, Richard Sorensen.

National Film Board of Canada with the National Anthropological Film Center of the Smithsonian Institution.

Haji Omar and his three sons belong to the Lakankhel, a Pakhtun tribal group in north‑eastern Afghanistan. The film focuses on this family: Haji Omar, the patriarch, a wealthy settled nomad, determined on economic div(‑rsification through his sons; Anwar, the eldest, his father's favourite, pastoralist and expert horse­man; Jannat Gul, cultivator and ambitious rebel; and Ismail,the youngest, attending school with a view to a job as a government official.

Much of the film is concerned with pastoral nomadic activities, beginning in the spring camp in the steppe not far from the provincial centre, Baghlan, and moving in May and June up and over the Khawak pass to mountain pastures in the Hindu Kush. Haji Omar's family home is near the small market town of Nahrin, which the nomads visit on their spring migration; further sequences show life in the bazaar‑, classes in the high school, dealings with government officials, and, at the end of the film, the expression of local rivalries in the Central Asian sport of buzkashi.

In concentrating on relations within one family, and through appropriate use of interviews and conversations, the film manages to draw sharp, colourful and memorable portraits of the protagonists and their problems. Unfortunately this is done at the expense of an adequate account of a number of important background themes: the complexity of ethnic relations in the region, the tribal structure of the Pakhtuns, the social organisation of nomadic camps, the basis of the fierce and incessant social rivalry', and the ecological, economic and demographic problems inherent in pastoral nomadism in the area; in particular, Islam, which is clearly important to the Lakankhel, is dealt with only through a few superficial remarks about polygyny and prayer. In some respects the film is misleading ‑ it fails, for example, to state that the Lakankhel, like other Pakhtuns in northern Afghanistan, moved to the region only during the last few generations.

In spite of these regrettable omissions, a commentary in the style of a travelogue, and the sometimes inappropriate use of the attractive local music, the film is an authentic, evocative and beautiful account of a little known region and way of life, and can usefully be shown in conjunction with some of the following background reading.

A. Balikci, 1978. 'Village Buzkashil, Afghanistan Journal, Vol‑5, No.1, pp.11‑21.

--- 1978. 'Buzkashil. Natural History, February, Pp‑54‑63.

K. Ferdinand, 1969. 'Nomadism in Afghanistan. With an Appendix on Milk Products'. In L. Foldes (ed.), Viehwirtschaft und Hirtenkultur. Budapest.

N. Tapper, 1977. 'Pashtun Nomad Women in Afghanistan'. Asian Affairs, Vol.8, N0.2, pp.163‑170.

R. Tapper, 1974. 'Nomadism in Modern Afghanistan: Asset or Anachronism?' In L. Dupree and L. Albert (eds.), Afghanistan in the 1970s. Praeger, New York.

1974. 'Durrani' Family of Man (Part Work), Vol.2, Pt.27, pp. 733-737. Marshall Cavendish, London.

---- 'Pathans'. Family of Man (Part Work), Vol.6, Pt.79, pp.2202-2206 Marshall Eavendish, London.