Inside Afghanistan: Politics, war and buzkashi
Few can claim a national game as violent or influential as Afghanistan has in buzkashi.
The country in which Canadian soldiers fought for 13 years is home to a deceptively complex society. And buzkashi (pronounced ‘BOO-skeh-shee’), which dates to the times of Genghis Khan, is a deceptively complex game that over the centuries has become woven into the fabric of Afghanistan’s warrior culture, its politics and power.
In fact, Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan is the title of an insightful book by former American diplomat G. Whitney Azoy. Azoy was based in Kabul in 1972 when a local friend poo-poo’d the high-society circles in which most diplomats mingled and told him that if he wanted to understand Afghanistan, he had to understand buzkashi.
With that, Azoy quit the di...
