Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan
"Whitney Azoy is a great inspiration: a scholar, an adventurer, whose love of Afghanistan and Afghans--and his deep understanding of the place--runs through everything that he does." --Rory Stewart, British Member of Parliament and author ofThe Places In Between and The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq"Azoy has been master of the game ever since this book was first published. Nobody can understand Afghanistan without understanding buzkashi and nobody can do that without reading Azoy. Power rests on personal reputation and performance--that is the criteria for politics in Afghanistan and for the game buzkashi which best reflects that. Azoy has brought his brilliant analytical skills to study a game through which we can decipher Afghan history, politics, and the present US occupation of that country. Over the decades, this book has held its ground amongst all the learned tomes that have been published on Afghanistan. The reason is that Azoy was the first and the best at understanding what makes the country tick--a game of the headless goat." --Ahmed Rashid, author ofTaliban: The Power of Militant Islam in Afghanistan and BeyondandDescent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia"Buzkashi is the definitive description of this Central Asian sport in all its complexity. Although `only a game,' the strategies employed in organizing buzkashi competitions transfer so readily to Afghan politics that the book constitutes a veritable `Afghan Art of War' in which personal competition, reputation building, lavish spending, and alliance building are keys to success and survival. In this new and revised edition, Azoy's interviews with the most powerful commanders who fought Afghanistan's wars in the north demonstrate that the buzkashi model has lost none of its power in explaining today's Afghanistan." --Thomas Barfield, President of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies and author ofAfghanistan: A Cultural and Political HistoryThomas Barfield, President of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies and author ofAfghanistan: A Cultural and Political History"Full of a master storyteller's love of Afghanistan, Whitney Azoy's book transcends its subject of the game of buzkashi to reach a deeper sense of today's Afghan culture where institutions no longer exist and reputations, the only currency to gain followers and political momentum, are constantly in flux. Fun, heroic, and frequently sad, the latest edition of Buzkashi provides a window of understanding on a human level into what Afghanistan has endured and become." --Ronald E. Neumann, former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, President of the American Academy of Diplomacy, and author ofThe Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan"This new edition of Buzkashi turns a great book into a classic. Once again we witness subtle political analysis, a mapping of the political into ritual that stays current with our daily lives, and a rendering of human passion that adds a final touch to the height of drama--the reading of a tragedy. Buzkashi, the game and the spirit, a ritual enactment of a tradition that once tied together the Euro-Asian landmass, now enters our studies and classrooms with all the majesty, human resilience, and folly our world can allow." --Frederick H. Damon, Professor of Anthropology, University of Virginia and co-editor ofOn the Order of Chaos: Social Anthropology and the Science of Chaos