Mambo

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.

Pre-christian times knew the people of Afghanistan as Ashvakas, or horsemen, since they raised fine breeds of horses and had a reputation for providing expert cavalrymen. 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.


Horses are usually referred to by their color. These are: Jerand (red), Toroq (dark red), Mushki (black), Kahar (yellowish), Gul Badam (dotted), Ablaq (Mixed) and Kabood (gray).

We can break down the afghan horses into different breeds, although the word "breed" is not really appropriate. Indeed, there is no official defintion of each category, with characteristics and morphology description. We could speak of: Herati, Mazari, Qataghani, Turkistani, Waziri and Yabu. But other people speak of: Tartar, Habash, Borta, Waziri, Arabi and Tazi.

There is a great need to document all this. Indeed the afghan horses and the traditions of breeding are disappearing. Just before the end of the war, every family here had their own horses that they were using for carriage or for buzkashi. As of today, most of these horses have been replaced by cars and motorbikes. Luckily the tradition of breeding horses is surviving in some places, in the North of the country, through the local elite, who have their own farms and train male studs for buzkashi.


Two types of breeds are used for buzkashi: The first one is Tartar, which comes primarily from the provinces of Baghlan, Kunduz, Samangan, Takhar, and Badakhshan. Small, but very swift and sturdy, these are the horses that so impressed Alexander the Great. Marco Polo, one of the first "tourists" to visit Central Asia, had nothing but praise for the horses of this area.

The second breed of horse used for Buzkashi is Habash, the great stallion of the Turkistan plains. This vast expanse of arid steppes and low foothills, stretching from Mazar-i-Sharif to Maimana, nurtures this breed. In the spring, large herds of these horses can be seen roaming freely over the grass-covered slopes of northern Afghanistan.

The Tartar, the Habash and the Waziri deserve some special attention as they are horses of amazing qualities. It would be great to label them, and maybe one day, export them. The Tartar would make a perfect polo horse, while the Waziri would be an excellent racing horse.