United they stand

Rohit Mahajan at the World Cup

Manchester, June 18

Sayed Abdullah Nizami recalls fascinating tales from his days as a frontline journalist in the conflict-torn Afghanistan.

He relates tales of battle in the Kunduz province, where the Afghan forces were fighting the Taliban. “I was in body armour, the fighting was going on, and I saw children playing a game of cricket,” says Nizami. “

“Once I interviewed a Taliban commander, in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan,” says Nizami, who works with the BBC in London now. “There were his men around him, and I was amazed to see that they were listening to the cricket commentary on the radio! They were very happy to see that the national team was doing well.”

“They are called terrorists, they have caused problems and they’ve targeted people and armed forces, but at the end of the day, they were proud of the fact that the national cricket team was doing well,” adds Nizami. “They don’t believe in the Afghan national flag, but they believe in the team.”

Believe!

The Afghani nation — often split by ethnicities, but united by cricket —believes in the national team. The Afghan diaspora in the UK does, for sure. For today’s match, they had travelled from across the lengths and breadths of this island, to congregate upon Manchester, where they knew that a festival of sorts was taking place.

Among them was an 82-year-old woman from London. “She rarely moves away from home because is not very strong now, and also because women in the Afghan culture don’t go out much, but she wanted to be here,” says Diva Patang, a presenter with the Radio Television of Afghanistan, the national broadcasting company. Diva Patang — the name translates to ‘Lamp-Butterfly’, in the tradition of ‘Shama Parwana’ of the Urdu — doesn’t use the family or tribe name that could identify her as a Pashtun. She wants to transcend the divisions of ethnicities in her country.

Pashtun sport?

Cricket is most popular among Pashtun — indeed, the national team is exclusively Pashtun. The Pashtuns have been the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan, which includes the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks as the other major ethnicities. Football, in fact, has a better representation of the country’s ethnicities, and thus can be referred to as a truly national sport, while critics often call cricket a Pashtun sport. But that wasn’t entirely a matter of choice. After the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979, a large number of Pashtun took refuge in Pakistan, while most non-Pashtuns went to countries such as Iran and Uzbekistan. “Football was more popular in Iran and central Asia, where the non-Pashtuns went,” says Akbar Stanikzai, a Pashtun fan of cricket. “And the Pashtuns learnt the game in Pakistan.”

Solidarity

Fans we talked with and the analysts insist that the ethnic differences are being bridged by cricket. Nizami, in fact, insists that there are no differences among the ‘civilian populations’. “There are no problems among the tribes of Pashtuns, Uzbeks or Tajiks,” he says. “The problems exist among the fighters. Civilian people don’t have any problems. There are inter-marriages as well.”

The sense of solidarity extends beyond the borders as well — to the Pashtun areas in Pakistan. “Having a line between us wouldn’t separate us at all,” says Diva about the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan, separated by the Duran Line. “It means nothing to us. We’ve got too many things in common… A line on a paper won’t divide us.”

In the field of play, England, world No. 1, put up a very dominant show. That didn’t dampen the spirits of the Afghan fans. “We’ve been playing cricket for only 18 years, England has played the sport for well over 150 years,” says Asif, a young fan. “We understand that it’s an achievement that the national team is playing in the World Cup for the second time,” adds Diva. Even Taliban could well be celebrating this.