Buzkashi
by G Whitney Azoy
Buzkashi means, literally, goat-grabbing. It is a very famous game played in North Afghanistan, which is a bit like polo played with a dead goat, or rather a calf because the Afghans say a goat is too fragile and the game ends too fast! People often talk about Afghan politics as a buzkashi, by which they mean a free-for-all. What Azoy noticed was that it was a non-violent way of doing politics. The game was a way of working out who was powerful and who wasn’t.
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“Buzkashi means, literally, goat-grabbing. It is a very famous game played in North Afghanistan which is a bit like polo played with a dead goat, or rather a calf because the Afghans say a goat is too fragile and the game ends too fast! In this type of polo a scrum of horsemen battle to grab the carcass and break free with it to win the round. It is a very exciting game because there are no rules, no teams and no boundaries. People can go in any direction including into the audience. The game goes on until the carcass is gone or the prizes are exhausted. The Afghan government adopted it as their national game with rules, boundaries and teams, which most aficionados thought missed the whole point of the game.” Read more...
Thomas Barfield, Anthropologist
