Mambo

Kabul is stifling hot... The air is dirty with dust and pollution... Ghazi stadium is quiet... Horses are at rest in the shadow of their stables... Tchopendoz are drinking tea and dreaming of battle plans for the next buzkashi season...

The new season is full of promises for Kabul. Karzai team is getting stronger. New outsiders are coming out. Even Dostom is coming down to the capital to set his own team and compete in the weekly games.

More teams, more horses, more riders... get ready for the show!

For years I have been hearing of buzkashi horses trained to kneel down to help their riders grab the carcass. I had actually never set eyes on one of these creatures until last month...

When I saw Gul Bodom for the first time, he was resting at peace in his stable. Although still, I could notice he was a beautiful and smart stallion. His groom was nursing him with an immense care... When I observed him in action on a buzkashi field, there was no doubt: Gul Bodom was one of these horses of legend.

Gol Bodom was scoring almost every point, and he was doing the same trick every time: The fierce horse would break the scuffle and push the other horses aside to reach the middle. He would then put a foot on the carcass to prevent other contenders to snatch it, and suddenly kneel down to make it easier for its rider to take it. Standing again, he would jump out of the scuffle with a big leap and run free for the flag.

At one point, the happy rider was too busy to grab the carcass. The horse simply opened his mouth, caught the 60 kilo-calf between his teeth, and galopped away. Amazing horse!

Maimana is the craddle of buzkashi.
Nowhere else in Afghanistan (and maybe on earth!) have the horsemen so much knowledge about the ancient secrets of breeding horses...

Suraj and Tauruq

Last friday was the most genuine game I ever played: Chaotic, violent and magnificent altogether...

There were already lots of horses on the field when I arrived to the stadium. The crowd of spectators was gathering, and the place was already vibrating. One could feel excitement and frenziness in the air... Haji Abdul Rashid was stepping out of his big car and shaking hands with Shamuq. Shamuq had made it from Mazar to Kabul, he was obviously a guest of honor. His presence was a good hint this would be an interesting game.

Looking around, I noticed there were horses and riders I had not seen before: Badakhshan... Balkh... Great to have people representing the colors of northern provinces! This was another hint: the game will be difficult to handle. The referee will probably go crazy on his microphone to have riders stick to his orders. The more teams involved, the more chaotic. Kabul, Karzai, Khorassan, Balkh, Badakhshan, Pansheer...

By the time I got on my horse and rallied the field, there were something like 60 horses. 60 horses, 6 different teams and only one carcass... If you add the fact that you can't find two riders wearing the same tchapane - there is no standard uniform for each team - you understand that there all the ingredients for chaos.



Hai koooooooooooooooo! Yaaaah! The game actually started without the whistle of the referee. No team, free for all! Horses kicking, rearing, biting... Ouch! Riders punching, whipping, shouting... Arrarhrh! A rider managed to make his way through the hooves of the horses by diving in the middle. He lifted the heavy carcass... But too late, a bigger horse jumped onto him and ripped him of the trophee, mad hord of 30 horses running after him...

For an hour, I played in pair with Leo, an Englishman who wanted to get a taste of buzkashi. He was opening the scuffle with my big horse while I was trying to sneak in... The fight was overwhelming. Fast and furious.

The scuffle was getting more intense every minute. Horses were throwing opaque flows of steam from their nostrils. The air quickly got saturated, making it impossible to see anything. I could't even perceive the scuffle, it was litterally moving around me... Only the smell of sweat, earth and blood. Horses neighing, riders being pushed from one side to the other... A couple of times, the fog cleared off and I could see the carcass for a short flash of a second or two. I pressed in to reach it, acting like a magnet, but it vanished almost instantly. And I was back in the fog, blind.

After another hour of fierce disorganized combat, the scuffle dissolved... An angry tchopendoz galopped out of the field with the carcass and led the hord to the middle of the road. So we actually played buzkashi in the middle of the traffic. Cars and trucks horning, people scared off and running away... Crazy Afghanistan!

When the angry tchopendoz made it back to the hallal to score, a disapproving grumble came from the audience: The rider went round the mosque, not round the flag. "Hallal niist, bairaq nakarda!". Haji Rashid agreed, this was not a score. But the referee granted the point and handed the money to the rider. 100 USD, a lot of money!!!

That was too much for Haji Abdul Rashid. He became red with anger and shouted: Game over!!! In Afghanistan, games most often end up on an argument...

Because Afghanistan has a great horse heritage

• A strong equestrian tradition

Horses arrived in Central Asia almost 10,000 years ago from across the Bering Strait. Since then, the history of Afghanistan has been intimately linked to the horse tradition.

The peoples who migrated from the steppes to Afghanistan domesticated the horse and used it as a mobile weapons platform for combat. Pre-Christian times already knew the people of Afghanistan as Ashvakas, or horsemen, since they raised fine breeds of horses and had a reputation for providing expert cavalrymen. Horsemen played a key role in every single war occurring on Afghan ground. Some say the mounted Mujaheed resistance killed 50,000 Russian during the Soviet occupation. Taliban as well were using horses to make swift moves from one position to the other.

The horse gradually became to play an important role in the political, social and even subsistence activities in the people of Afghanistan. Until very recently, every family owned at least one horse to help with traveling and daily chores of herding. It’s only with the recent decades of war and the sudden development of a new lifestyle that horses have declined in dramatic numbers.

Horses are still worshipped today by the Afghans as worthy and precious animals. The most brilliant and vibrating demonstration of the Afghan devotion to horses still appear in the traditional games of niaza bazi (tent pegging) and buzkashi.


• Fine horse breeds

For a long time, Northern Afghanistan has been breeding stallions of exceptional endurance and speed. Actually a theory goes that the thoroughbred Arab horse originates from Afghanistan! Much later, Tamerlan the Great brought 6,000 mares from Arabia to enrich and purify the local breeds. We can definitely say there is some noble blood in Afghan horses.

The word breed is not really appropriate for the Afghan horses because there is no official classification with characteristics and morphology description. We however commonly speak of Afghan horses according to their origin.

There are numerous tales of amazing feats performed by Afghan horses. These stallions demonstrate the attributes of the finest horses. The Turkmen and the Waziri horses for example are of stunning grace, splendor, endurance and speed, and can easily vie with the famous Arabian and Western breeds.


• A great knowledge

The Afghan horsemen have a vast understanding of the breeding and training techniques. They have been building on experience throughout the centuries and possess complex secrets of hippology. Most of this original knowledge is unknown to western horsemen.


Because there is a strong danger of extinction of breeds and tradition

• Disappearance of the Afghan horses

During the years of war and fighting, horses have been shifted from one place to the other, and today the notion of breed is fuzzier than ever. If nothing is done, it will soon be impossible to distinguish different breeds among the Afghan horses.

Most fine horses have disappeared in war and fighting in the course of the last three decades. In the single battle of Qala-e-Janghi in December 2001, 300 horses were killed in battle.

Domestic horses have been replaced by cars and motorbikes. This change in the lifestyle has made the number of Afghan horses dropped dramatically in the course of the last six years.

On top of that, horses are now being imported from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These tall and strong stallions, which are crossbreds created in the USSR for agricultural purposes, are used for buzkashi and are slowly supplanting the local breeds.


• Vanishing traditions

As a metaphor for the horse tradition, the game of buzkashi is rallying the interest of the Afghan population but is in danger of vanishing.

In the aftermath of the 2001 events and the fall of the Taliban regime, buzkashi is flourishing again. The mujahideens who used to play the game in exile have come back to the country and spread the game nationwide. While the game was originally a feature of the Turkic people from the northern provinces of the country, today it is played by Hazara in the Central Highlands, Pashto in the South, Tajik in Kabul…

Paradoxically, the genuine horse culture is vanishing. Indeed, the peoples who have recently entered the game are not familiar with the ancient secrets of hippology. The true and original practices of breeding and training horses are actually disappearing and the knowledge of the expert horsemen is being diluted. The equestrian knowledge is oral, and without any documentation work, it will soon be lost.

I started Kabul Buzkashi Team 18 months ago with 3 other commanders: Haji Abdul Rashid, Emir Ibrahim and Haji Aminullah. This was the first time ever that Kabul had its own buzkashi team. There had been other parties competing in Kabul before, mainly Marshall Fahim (Pansheer) and Hamid Karzai, but there was no official Kabul team.

We now have one. We keep our horses in the Ghazi stadium, which hosted many of the historical events that marked Afghanistan along the twentieth century. Last year, we played almost every Friday against Fahim and Karzai. While we defeated Karzai most of the time, we were never able to withstand the assaults of Fahim. His tall horses were too strong for us…

Although I had already played buzkashi in the past, I realized how tough it was to play match after match. If not injured, a couple of days are necessary to recover from a game. I also discovered that the team spirit was almost inexistent. Indeed, although the riders are split into teams, the reality of the game is much more of a free-for-all. On top of that, I had to make myself accepted as a foreigner, which is not easy. Alone with my horse...

The season is just about to begin again. We are reshuffling the cards and making new battle plans. The training is on and the tension is growing.

The winner of a buzkashi game is actually the one who organizes it. The lord (warlord, most of the time) can measure his power by both the number of riders participating in the contest and the size of the crowd : the more people, the more prestigious.

The horse owners are the second category of winners. They are rich men who possess a handful of stallions and thus sponsorize a team. Horses are attached to a team for a whole season.

Horses represent the third category. These dragons are the key to the game. A good horse knows how to break the scuffle, ram into other horses, stand above the carcass and protect its riders. People say "better a poor rider on a good horse than a good rider on a poor horse". Good buzkashi horses are very valuable and are respected accordingly.

The last category of winners is made of the riders themselves. They can ride different horses and switch teams from one match to the other. Most of them are free and independent minds who do not depend on the horse owners. They try to ride the best horses to score and make money.