Buzkashi as a Metaphor for Afghan Politics

Aug. 30, 2002 — -- In the traditional Afghan sport of buzkashi, athletes and horses sponsored by the most powerful men vie to break out of a brutal scrum and into the open while carrying a headless goat or calf carcass; rivals often form temporary alliances to prevent the strongest players from gaining control.

In traditional Afghan politics, it can be the same thing — only minus the goat, the horses and the players.

"The thing is a metaphor for Afghan politics in the sense that people in Afghanistan are always trying to gain control," says G. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and author of the 1982 book "Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan," recently revised and republished.

"When it seems as if you're going to do it, everybody gangs up on you," he adds. "When it seems you're a little weak, everybody gangs up on whoever seems strong. And that's exactly what happened in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s."

Scholars, including Azoy, warn against going too far in broadly using native sports as Freudian metaphors for a country's character. For instance, one sports historian has heard and questioned foreigners' assessments of American football as showing American imperialist attitudes or repressed sexuality.

But in the case of buzkashi, unlike many other sports, Azoy says, separating the rules of the game and the society can be difficult.

"It is a game, but it's more than a game for the Afghans," Azoy says. "Buzkashi sort of stands in their mind, the way they use the word, as when the veneer of predictable, essentially civilized, essentially cooperative, amicable [life] is cracked. Then, it is as if this stuff lies underneath and it bursts forth, and life becomes a 'buzkashi.'"

The most emotional contests can go way beyond rivalries as American sports fans understand them — such as baseball's New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox rivalry.

"What happens on Friday night or over the season between the Yankees and Red Sox pretty much stops there," Azoy says. "It doesn't alter the balance of power between the two cities, or between the mayors of the two cities."