Artists flee Swat valley to escape fanatics' threats

Mohammad Shahid scrapes together a living in a city slum by painting birds, flowers, animals and celebrity portraits onto minibuses -- and vows never to return to the horrors of Swat valley.

After pro-Taliban vigilantes beat and threatened him at gunpoint, he swapped the green pastures and sweeping mountains of his birthplace for the concrete jungle of Pakistan's smoggy metropolis of Karachi on the Gulf.

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Today Swat, tomorrow...?

It was heart-breaking to leave the idyll of his youth, he said, but there was no choice. "I had to come here because there was no other chance for me or my family to survive," said 45-year-old Shahid.

The memories of the terrifying campaign waged by Islamist hardliners to enforce sharia law are still fresh for Shahid, and no fledgling truce between the government and those who chased him out will persuade him to return.

"I'm a painter, an artist. I can't do anything else to earn a living. The Taliban won't allow people like us to do our work, which saw my family suffer.

Shahid said he used to make a good living painting landscapes, birds, Pakistani and Indian film stars, pavement caricatures and portraits, which were popular with tourists who flocked to the once-friendly and tolerant valley.

But then the fanatics came, the tourists left and life changed for those who made a living from the arts.