Dust rises as men spur their horses onto a field, signaling the start of another game of buzkashi, Afghanistan’s often-violent national sport designed to showcase the riders’ abilities and warrior spirit.
Buzkashi, which translates roughly as “goat pulling,” has been played for centuries across Central Asia. Similar to polo, the sport involves two teams trying to accumulate points by propelling a headless goat carcass to the scoring area. These days, fake goat carcasses are used.
Amid foreign invasions, civil wars, insurgent attacks and, more recently, the resumption of Taliban rule, Afghans have always gathered to cheer on their favorite “chapandaz,” as the riders are known.
Photo: AFP
National league matches resumed on Feb. 24 for the first time since the Taliban took over in August last year.
A knockout match was played last week between the Kandahar and Badakhshan provincial teams in front of about 5,000 Afghans, including members of the Taliban.
Previous games were often shadowed by fears of attacks, and players faced threats from people in their own province if they played for another provincial team.
Photo: AFP
Yet the Taliban’s harsh crackdown on crime has eased the minds of many, including Gulbuddin Ismail Khail, captain of the Kandahar team, last year’s league champions.
“We had a good year last year, but this year is even better, because people are cheering for all teams with a calm mind,” said the 37-year-old, who is from Balkh Province, but chose to play for the Kandahar team, who won the match.
For fans, the game’s significance will weather the country’s current crisis, just as it has outlasted previous wars.
“Although there is a lot of poverty and unemployment in our country, we still came from Balkh Province to watch this game, because we are very interested in the sport,” audience member Abdul Saboor said.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they