Afghan warlords Ghawsudin and Sher Arab have been at war for most of their lives, sometimes fighting side by side as they did against the Soviets, other times fighting each other.
Now, almost nine years into a new era — a US-sponsored government challenged by a Taliban-led insurgency tearing their country apart — the two men are again at war, but this time they use proxies to fight their battles.
At sports festivals across Afghanistan’s relatively peaceful north, Ghawsudin and Sher Arab are represented in the ring by giant Central Asian camels.
Banned as un-Islamic under the Taliban’s radical 1996-2001 regime, camel fighting is a violent feature of daily life in Afghanistan, a country where the value of both men and animals is based on their fighting skills.
In the northern province of Balkh, Ghawsudin and Arab are well known, not only as veteran warriors but as owners of the best fighting camels in the land, and as masters of the game.
“We wait all year for this,” said Khwaja Habib, a farmer from Balkh’s Dawlat Abad district, ahead of a mighty clash between Luk and Nar, two enormous camels representing, respectively, Ghawsudin and Arab.
“They have the strongest camels, it’s going to be a real game,” Habib said, as more than a dozen men escorted the two camels onto a dirt field circled by thousands of spectators, almost all of them men.
The animals are positioned face-to-face and then, spitting with fury, ram each other in a battle that resembles a men’s wrestling match.
The crowd roars its approval as one of the camels — it is Luk, Ghawsudin’s beast — forces the other into submission by pressing down on his neck with his massive chest.
“He’s going to kill him,” shouts the referee in the muddy ring before ordering that the muzzled animals be separated ahead of a second round.
The men, with their long beards and turbans, roar their protest but the decision has been made by the losing camel, Nar, who has picked himself up and is running out of the ring.
According to the rules of camel fighting, by turning tail the giant gray has conceded to Luk.
Laughter erupts, banknotes are exchanged as gamblers collect or pay on their bets and Ghawsudin accepts congratulations as a dozen of his men parade Luk in a lap of honor.
“Yes, we won,” Ghawsudin said. “As usual.”
“It’s an old tradition that we have inherited from our ancestors,” Ghawsudin, who uses only one name, said as his fans cheered his victory.
“We like it — especially when we win,” he said, with a loud laugh.
Camel fighting has made a strong comeback as a spectator sport since the Taliban regime — which also banned music, kite flying and education for girls — was overthrown in a US-led invasion in late 2001.
Its popularity is mostly concentrated in the north, where the Taliban have had little influence, even when they were in power.
As a result, the northern provinces have been largely shielded from Taliban excesses, though Kunduz and Baghlan have seen a rise in insurgency-related violence in recent years.
The relative peace of the north — especially in Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of Balkh — has allowed people to revive such traditions as buzkashi, a frantic, mounted polo-like sport using a headless goat carcass rather than a ball, and kite flying.
But making animals fight each other and betting on the outcome is a favorite pastime: Along with camel fighting, sports festivals often include ram fighting, dog fighting, even bird fighting.
The enthusiasm on show in the north stands in stark contrast to the south, where the insurgency is concentrated and where most ordinary people live in fear of both the militants and the NATO-backed forces fighting them.
Animal fights have been specifically targeted by militants in the southern provinces, making attendance a high-risk venture.
In February 2008, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 80 people at a dog fight in Kandahar. Most of the dead were farmers having a flutter.
But even in Mazar-i-Sharif, nothing is taken for granted.
“We have security. Without security you can’t have fun,” Ghawsudin said.
Negotiations begin for a second bout and a fresh pair of camels is escorted into the ring — again representing the former warlords.
But this time the fighting lasts hardly two minutes as Arab’s camel pulls back after the first contact with Ghawsudin’s spitting light-gray.
Mocking laughter from the crowd fills the air.
“It’s his unlucky day,” said one spectator, referring to Arab who has left without saying a word.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
RSS