Football and Taliban
On September11, 2013, there was gunfire heard on the streets of Kabul, a sound not unfamiliar to the four million plus inhabitants of the Afghanistan capital. These circumstances were unique however. The men’s national team had just beaten India 2-0 in Kathmandu to win the final of the South Asian Championship – one of the four major regional titles up for grabs in the world’s biggest continent. To be champion of a territory that is home to close to two billion people is not to be sniffed at and hinted at bigger and better things to come.
It remains to be seen if the future is still bright for the beautiful game in the country after the Taliban’s rapid capture of Kabul in August, but there is understandable trepidation. The militant Islamic group was in power from 1996 to 2001, when it was ousted by a US-led invasion force. during those
