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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