It’s not easy being an athlete under the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic movement that took power in Kabul in 1996. For one thing, the United Nations has refused to extend recognition to the Taliban-led government. For another, the International Olympic Committee suspended Afghanistan’s National Olympic Committee because it “no longer functioned in any manner nor organized sports in the country.”
Actually, it does. From spartan offices in the Kabul Olympic Stadium, the national committee’s officials have continued to organize sports events, though they are limited to a $50,000 budget. Afghan sports officials say the International Olympic Committee is barring Afghanistan from the Olympics for political reasons. The Taliban are giving refuge to accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, who is wanted for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa. “We know that it is at the behest of the United States that we are being kept out of the Olympics,” says Abdul Shakur Mutmaen, head of the National Olympic Committee.
The Taliban have had difficulty convincing the world that they aren’t actually opposed to athletics. The movement’s leaders have vowed to create the world’s purest Islamic state, and religion has permeated sports. In July members of a visiting soccer team from Pakistan were arrested and had their heads shaved by religious police because they were wearing shorts during a match in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. The Taliban official responsible for the arrests was reportedly fired. Since the vast majority of women are banned from studying or working, and none of them are allowed to show their faces in public, they are unable to take part in competitive sports. Male boxers were banned in 1998 from competing in Pakistan because they had beards, which the Taliban made mandatory for all Afghan men; the same probably would have happened at the Olympics. During soccer matches at the Kabul Olympic Stadium, religious police routinely force men to pray at sunset. Public executions and amputations are carried out on other days in the same stadium.
The athletes haven’t given up hope. Mohammad Ishaq Sayad, 23, a tae kwon do competitor, rises at 4 a.m. to train before going to work in a tailor’s shop, where he earns about $16 a month. He divides that between his family and athletes who are worse off than he is. His “gym” is a converted concrete government building. “Whenever I enter this room,” he says, “I forget all my worries.” In a run-down boxing gym, once a workers’ cafeteria, Rohla Rahimi, 21, wonders if he’ll ever get a chance to box on the world stage. “I’m really disappointed. Still, we work hard, we sweat hard,” he says. His coach, Nisar Ahmad Qarizadah, competed in the Moscow Olympics in 1980. “We don’t care about politics,” he says. “We are just athletes.” Wrestler Jan will continue training, too, though he may be too old for the next Olympics. There is little else to do: the Taliban have banned cinemas, music and TV.
