Amid all the shaven-headed Americans who have moved into Pakistan during the past 10 days in the search for Osama Bin Laden, another US invasion has gone almost unnoticed.

A small band of feminists led by the playwright Eve Ensler is in Islamabad to support a group of Pakistan's leading film actresses who last night defied the country's powerful mullahs to perform a play.

Ensler's play, which tells stories of women and how they relate to their bodies and sexuality, has been performed in 48 countries, but never in a society with such repressive laws against women. The women rehearsed secretly in a large house out of town. Entry to last night's show in a hotel banqueting hall was by invitation only which referred simply to "The V Monologues" and a small army of bouncers was hired in case any mullahs or militant Islamic youths tried to stop the performance.

The cast read like a list of Pakistan's top actresses including Nadia Jamil, Samina Pirzada and Ayeshah Alam.

Ensler encouraged them to add horrific local statistics to the script: "Talk about the 5,000 women a year burnt with acid or set fire to by their husbands or in-laws for failing to bear sons or to be sufficiently obedient."

The driving force behind last night's production was Nighat Rizvi, who, as the first woman in Pakistan to campaign publicly on Aids, is used to taking risks. "I've had my office raided, red-painted rocks thrown through my windscreen, had a fatwa put on my head, but if we don't say what we believe nothing will change."

She contacted the actresses and to her astonishment they agreed. Pirzada is used to controversy. She was barred from appearing on television for two years for appearing with her head uncovered.

The women are hoping last night's performance will be the start of a movement against the Hudood Ordinance brought in by Pakistan's military dictator, Zia ul-Haq. This contains the "zina" law under which a woman who is raped must produce at least two male witnesses. If she fails, she is convicted of adultery, for which the penalty is stoning to death.

The actresses want to translate the monologues into Urdu and take the play into villages. "Then we will take it to London and New York to show western women that, underneath all our clothes, Muslim women are just as wild as they are," said Jamil. - The Sunday Times

[This article has also appeared in the Daily Times (Pakistan).]