With the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan often marked by diplomatic fouls and offsides, it took a soccer match in Kabul to bring the neighbors together on Tuesday.
Billed as an indication of the country’s gradual return to normality after decades of war and violence, the FIFA-sanctioned friendly was played at a sold-out Afghan Football Federation Stadium. The jubilant crowd cheered at every pass, erupting into a frenzy when game ended 3-0 to Afghanistan.
The second season of the Afghan Premier League will kick off today at the 6,000-seat venue.
Photo: AFP
The last time the Pakistan national team played in Afghanistan was in 1977. Given the background of strained — sometimes violent — relations, the game was heavy with diplomatic significance, although that seemed to matter little to the Afghan crowd.
“I hope to come to many more international games here,” said Haroon Shirzad, a 21-year-old student who was shirtless and painted from the waist to his hairline in the colors of the Afghan flag.
Youths such as Shirzad sat alongside men with long, gray beards in the buoyed up crowd.
Photo: Reuters
Although the mood was overwhelmingly positive and convivial, the match was a brief bright moment in an otherwise troubled and often bloody relationship.
As NATO-led forces work toward ending their combat role in the war, there are concerns that Pakistan, despite being a US ally, is again stepping up its support of the Taliban to try to counter the influence of archrival India, which it believes supports anti-Pakistan elements in the country.
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a large, porous border riddled with insurgents and smuggling activity, and have a history of strained relations that sometimes led to clashes.
Not only do they not see eye to eye on their border, Pakistan’s role in the 12-year war in Afghanistan has been ambiguous.
Kabul has often accused Islamabad of making public pronouncements about wanting to help bring the Taliban to the negotiating table, but privately allowing elements of its intelligence community to support the insurgency
The lines of riot police at the entrances to the stadium were nervous, but orderly — they had been preparing for this day for a week, according to one of them.
“Security has to be very tight because it is such an important game,” he said.
While the game was celebrated as a chance to promote Afghanistan’s future, the ghosts of the past were never far away.
“If this were football match in Kabul during Taliban rule, halftime would have meant Namaz [prayers] or [you would receive] public punishment,” one Afghan tweeted.
Other reminders were also present. The match was played less than a kilometer away from Ghazi Stadium, which today is used by the national Afghan team to train, but during the brief rule of the Taliban was used for public executions and mutilations of people who had transgressed the Taliban’s strict laws.
Once the match was finished the Afghanistan team ensured the crowd knew just how pleased they were to have won, dancing in circles and waving large Afghan flags.
“I’m so proud that Afghanistan beat Pakistan; Pakistan has always looked down on us,” Afghan head coach Mohammad Yousuf Kargar told local television.
A second game between the two nations is scheduled for December in the northeastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier