AFGHANISTAN:Taking a Break From War With a Game Anything But Gentle

Taking a Break From War With a Game Anything But Gentle

By DEXTER FILKINS(NYT.COM)
PUSHTESURKH, Afghanistan — Not every sport can boast referees who cradle assault rifles, or winners who eat the animal carcasses they have spent the afternoon fighting over.

But as the buzkashi match unfolded on a valley floor here north of Kabul, the vectors of politics and play seemed, for a moment, to intersect.

On the field, 15 horsemen, many of them wearing traditional Uzbek hats and robes, beat and savaged one another for control of the beheaded goat that is the object of the game. Men whipped their horses. Men whipped other men’s horses. Men whipped one another. Horses trampled spectators, stood on their hind legs, galloped with eyes bulging.

A crowd — men, warlords, boys — looked on, following the strange game with a sophistication handed down from the time of Genghis Khan, and which, in the madness, allowed them to discern victory from defeat.

“Bravo! Bravo!” cried the announcer into a bullhorn, a rifle strapped to his back in case things got of out hand, as they sometimes do. “Another goal for Isok!”

And Mr. Isok, show-off that he was, trotted his white stallion over to a man named Noor, one of the warlords presiding over the day’s match. Commander Noor was seated in a sort of throne at midfield, fingering a bowl of candy-coated almonds. He handed the horseman a wad of bills.

“Well done,” Commander Noor said. “You’re the best.”

Mr. Isok galloped back onto the field, right arm held high, horsewhip in hand.

Afghanistan may be in the midst of an interminable war, but buzkashi is eternal, too. The world has grown up, but the game lives on.

Buzkashi may be brutal, but as even a novice can see, it requires remarkable horsemanship and strength. The game in Pushtesurkh began as any other: a group of men, divided into three teams, rode atop their horses onto a wide flat field. At one end of the field lay a small chalk circle, six feet across. At the other, 75 yards away, a small post.

On the ground between them lay a large black goat, beheaded, disemboweled, and soaked overnight in cold water — to make it especially stiff.

And then the men went at it. The object of buzkashi is to grab the goat, gallop round the pole with the carcass in hand, race back toward the circle and drop the goat inside. Imagine polo played with a dead animal.

Of course, it was more complicated than that. For starters, there was the backdrop to the match itself. Three teams squared off: one from the nearby town of Jabal-us-Siraj, another from Kapisa and the last from Salang. At various times between 1996 and 2001, parts of these areas were under the control of the Taliban, which banned buzkashi, along with other games like marbles and kite flying.

The horses for two of the teams were owned by a pair of warlords, ethnic Tajik commanders who had fought the Taliban. They sat together, eating their almonds, on a small bluff that overlooked the field.

Most of the match took the form of a giant scrum that formed around the chalk circle, with the players for one team struggling to drag the carcass into the circle and players for the other two trying to keep it out. The goat was twisted and turned, stretched this way and that. (Buzkashi means “goat pulling” in Dari; jockeys are known as “palawans,” or “wrestlers.”)

Within minutes, the scrum became a brawl. The sound of a dozen whips striking a dozen hinds rose above the tumult. Crack-crack-crack! The sound of a dozen fists striking a dozen heads rose, too. Thwack-thwack-thwack!

“Let go of that goat’s leg!” yelled a jockey from inside the scrum.

The stallions snorted and grimaced, champed on their bits, pranced forward and back.

And then, in a flash, a horseman escaped, sprinting away from the scrum at a furious gallop, holding the 70-pound carcass in a single hand.

Other jockeys galloped in pursuit, grabbing and pulling at the goat. The crowd let out a cheer, and the horseman with the goat swung his stallion around for another run at the goal. It was Mr. Isok, the star. Other horsemen galloped in close, trying to swipe the carcass.

“Go!” cried a young man watching from the bluff. “Go in there and grab that goat.”

Hazards abound. A jockey, crouching low in the saddle to scoop up the goat, slipped from his horse, crashed to the dirt and was trampled by a horse. Another horseman, his stallion rearing up, fell on his back.

And then, Mr. Isok, the horseman from Salang, galloped away from everyone else in a grand sweeping maneuver, taking his horse directly into the crowd; in buzkashi, the field has no boundaries. Spectators scattered and screamed as the horses thundered close. The referee reached for his Kalashnikov, then thought better of it.

“Run!” a boy squealed. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Run!”

After three hours, the team from Salang led with 30 goals, ahead of Jabal-us-Siraj with 20 and Kapisa with 16. Mr. Isok was the high scorer with 10 goals.

As the match wound down, an old man named Abdul Bashir looked on. His face glowed. The best part, he said, was still to come. After the game, the winning team would roast the bedraggled goat over an open flame.

“I love that meat,” Mr. Bashir said with an old man’s smile. “All that pulling and stretching makes it very tender.”