On a dusty field, as military helicopters buzz overhead, a group of Afghans are tackling a new challenge.
Divided into two lines, the hopeful rugby players race toward each other, one line of men trying to wrap their arms around the legs of players on the other line to stop them. Only a few carry the hulking frame typical of rugby players, the rest almost impossibly skinny and light on their feet. One runs barefoot.
This is the start of Afghan rugby, a sport still in its infancy in a war-ravaged nation where training can be canceled by Taliban attacks and players are routinely frisked for suicide bomb vests.
Organizers and athletes dream of one day being recognized internationally and playing against famous teams like the New Zealand All Blacks and South Africa’s Springboks, though they have many pitches to travel before that day.
Despite once being occupied by the British, rugby never took hold in Afghanistan, though the nation remains a place where contact sports have a history and spectators are not squeamish.
Cockfights and dogfights regularly take place in the early morning, while horse-riding buzkashi players still pull around headless goat carcasses in the Afghan version of polo.
Afghan children play soccer and a rough-and-tumble game that bears similarities to rugby, and decades of war have also influenced generations of young men willing throw themselves at an opponent.
“They’re not afraid of the physical contact of the game,” said Steve Brooking, a British expatriate who has worked for embassy and nonprofit organizations in Kabul and is now helping organize the team.
However, the war does make things difficult for the young squad.
While about 60 men have come out to practice between Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad, attacks in Herat led to organizers canceling a planned training clinic there.
Finding a place to practice also remains a problem in Kabul, as players found themselves spraining their wrists in falls on the largely grassless field of a Kabul park. Now the squad trains in a field hockey venue alongside Kabul’s Olympic stadium, the same arena the Taliban used to cut off the hands of thieves and hold executions during their five-year rule.
“Rugby is a new game for Afghanistan, but the young Afghan generation, ... they can play this game,” said Mohammed Shur, a 29-year-old gemstone seller who helps coach the players.
Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, once-banned sports have returned to Afghanistan. The grunt of martial arts training can be heard echoing through the country’s Olympic stadium.
None have taken off as much as cricket, a once-uncommon sport in this country, but not in the region, with Pakistan and India being world powers in the sport.
Afghanistan has developed a reputation across the cricket world after winning the World Cricket League Division 3 tournament in 2009, qualifying for the Twenty20 World Cup and beating the US team last year.
Now players hope the same for rugby, which has seen a recent surge of interest from the Middle East and the Islamic world. Dubai has built a specialized academy for rugby players and now hosts tournaments, while unions have been set up in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Qatar.
Neighbor Pakistan long has had a rugby team, while Iran became an associate member of the International Rugby Board last year.
Afghanistan will take one step at a time, first seeking membership to the Asian Rugby Football Union, which could lead later to membership of the IRB. The move also comes as the 2016 Olympics will include seven-a-side rugby.
For now though, the rugby hopefuls of Afghanistan concentrate on the basics. Practice remains focused on tackle after tackle, pass after pass.
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