Aziz Ahmad has spent almost every day of Afghanistan's chaotic years of conflict on horseback.
Much of the time he was a guerrilla, spending long hours in the saddle to fetch weapons from across the mountainous border with Pakistan. But more important to him is the time he spent on something almost as dangerous.
Ahmad plays buzkashi, Afghanistan's passionate national game -- a violent pastime that has brought him honor and wealth.
Buzkashi, a wild contest involving an unlimited number of men on horseback, is believed to have been invented by 13th century Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan to train his troops for war.
The sport still has a proud following, primarily among northern Afghanistan's ethnic Uzbeks, Turkmens and Tajiks.
And Ahmad is -- by reputation -- the best of them all, a distinction he is not shy about.
"I've no rival," the rugged 40-year-old said after a match in Kabul in which he and his chestnut stallion scored eight of the 12 goals.
"He really is the best," agreed other players, dusty and sweaty after the game.
The winter game -- a likely precursor to modern-day polo -- is a relentless struggle between two teams over a calf that has been beheaded and drained of blood. Sometimes the carcass is soaked in cold water for 24 hours to toughen it up, although it is often shredded by the end of play.
Dozens of men -- wearing small caps, a short robe and baggy trousers -- and their charged animals jostle around a circle marked out in a corner of a large dusty field, and fight to bend down and yank out the calf with their hands.
The one able to grab it leads a gallop around the perimeter of the field while fighting off other competitors trying to snatch it away.
The player who eventually manages, after the mad dash around the field, to hurl the carcass back into the circle scores a goal, usually earning himself cash prizes besides points for his team.
The excitement is keenest when the horses are crowded around the circle, trying to block out each other so their tough riders can swoop down to pick up the calf and sprint off to score.
"[They struggle] like it is the end of the world," said a spectator on the edges of the field, long trampled under the hooves of countless horses.
Ahmad said he was only 16 when he first climbed into the saddle for a buzkashi game in his home village in green, valleyed northern Kunduz province. The occasion was a rite of passage into manhood in male-dominated Afghanistan.
"When I got onto the horse, I felt like I was flying," Ahmad smiles. "When I grabbed the calf, I felt like a man.
"Even though I played really badly," he said.
The teenager steadily rose through the ranks of the village-level competition, improving with each match but still unable to beat off his older rivals.
The next winter, the school student had emerged as a successful young horseman and his ambition to be village champion was realized.
"I'd narrowly got what I was dreaming of," said Ahmad, who these days is a father of nine. "At least I was the number one of my own village."
Meanwhile word of his skill was spreading.
At 18 he was conscripted into the army of the fragile Soviet-backed regime that was trying to crush the mujahidin or holy warriors who had risen up against the Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
At the same time, he was invited to join the various resistance fronts made up of millions of farmers, students, mullahs and illiterate villagers who had taken up arms against the "infidels."
Ahmad chose holy war.
"I had to join the jihad. My country, my religion and my dignity was at risk. I had to abandon buzkashi. Jihad was more important," he said.
His mission was to travel by horseback to neighboring Pakistan to collect weapons that were supplied by the US as part of its strategy to undermine Russia, its Cold War foe.
He spent days in the saddle, crossing the rugged mountain passes and deep valleys of northeastern Afghanistan that were frequently bombed by Soviet warplanes.
"When you're in a buzkashi field, you are chased by a rival team trying to prevent you from reaching the circle. But in a battlefield you are chased by Russian jets, trying to stop you from reaching your comrades waiting for weapons," he said.
One of his starkest memories was when his caravan was ambushed by Soviet soldiers at noon on a stormy day.
Several of his fellow mujahidin were killed. His life was saved when his white steed sprinted him away from the gunfight -- eventually galloping so far away that he became lost.
The parched Ahmad recalled some advice from his village elders and dropped the reins.
"If you're lost, just let the horse go -- he knows his way to populated areas. That worked for me," he said.
In between bombardments and ambushes, Ahmad, then 25, still found time for the buzkashi field, such as when he and other passionate players, known as chapandaz, put on the first-ever display of the sport in Pakistan.
The match was broadcast on television across the country and sparked such interest that former military leader Zia ul-Haq summoned the players for a competition in the capital Islamabad, Ahmad said.
He proudly recalls the ex-president pinning a medal on his chest after his all-mujahidin team won the game.
As the war dragged on, eventually claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, Ahmad and his mates would periodically take a break from the front to ride for the carcass in refugee camps in Pakistan that were steadily filling up with millions of Afghans.
"Even during jihad, when the weather was cloudy that meant there would be no Russian planes. That was when the commander called for a game," said fellow player and mujahidin, Abdul Marouf, 37.
All the while the iron-fisted Ahmad was becoming tougher -- both on the battlefield and in the game.
Ahmad had started his collection of scars from whiplashes and striking hooves that now mark his face and body. Several of his fingers are gnarled after being snapped by the reins. He has seen four players trampled to death.
The mujahidin did not put down their arms after the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989, continuing their struggle against the Soviet-backed regime that remained. They eventually claimed victory in 1992 and battle-hardened warriors, Ahmad among them, entered Kabul to celebrate.
They were soon called to a buzkashi game to mark their success. The several-hour bout ended with a victory for Ahmad's team and him atop of the winners' podium.
But the post-war jubilation was shortlived. Another even more vicious power struggle erupted, this time between the various mujahidin leaders -- and this time fighting for power.
This four-year conflict, which struck at the heart of Afghanistan's deep ethnic rivalries, was to leave tens of thousands more dead and the capital in ruins.
Ahmad was not interested in the new hostilities: he quickly left Kabul and returned to his land in northern Kunduz and the game he loved.
As civil war raged in the capital, Ahmad's fame spread throughout buzkashi-loving circles. He came to the notice of one of Afghanistan's most powerful mujahidin warlords, Marshal Mohammed Qasim Fahim, an ardent follower of the game and owner of dozens of buzkashi horses.
Under age-old northern Afghan traditions, the pride and honor accorded to victorious buzkashi players is shared in equal measure by the owner of the successful stable. Fahim was looking for a rider who could bring him glory.
He chose Ahmad and despatched a helicopter from Kabul to Kunduz with an offer of big money and other prizes to lure the player back to the capital.
Ahmad said he was reluctant but finally yielded.
He was in Kabul until just before it was captured in 1996 by the hardline Taliban Islamist movement.
Ahmad, Fahim and hundreds of others under the leadership of the late mujahidin leader Ahmad Shah Masoud fled north, joining the Northern Alliance's spirited challenge to the Taliban's brutal rule -- which was ended with the US-led attack in 2001.
Fahim served for two years as a defense minister in the new US-backed government and was deputy to new leader and current president, Hamid Karzai.
Ahmad returned to his beloved buzkashi, a sport often compared to the country's bloody past of power struggles involving foreign and domestic players.
The lull in the fighting, notwithstanding a Taliban-led insurgency, has allowed Ahmad to rise to the top of his sport and brought glory to Fahim, now a parliamentarian.
Fahim has in turn rewarded his star player with lucrative prizes.
For one game, Ahmad says, Fahim gave him a jeep worth US$10,000 dollars. In another, he got a house in Kabul. And another time he took home enough cash to marry a second wife.
"Whatever I got is from buzkashi," he said with a smile, predicting he will be in the saddle for a while yet.
"At least another 10 years," he said, stabbing the air with his finger, "Mark my words."
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