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Ski Afghanistan?

snowmonster

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In my mind, northern New England
Why not? After all, this country gave us Kandahar. Perhaps the next AZ summit? I like the fact that they profiled an Afghan skier whose motivation to ski is so universal: to woo women.;)
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577263343870606130.html

Since Skiing Came to Afghanistan, It Has Been Pretty Much All Downhill
Second Annual Championship Includes Climbing Mountain on Foot and Evading Taliban

By CHARLES LEVINSON

KOH-E-BABA, Afghanistan—Ten Afghan men jumped out front as the second international Afghan Ski Challenge championship began here on Friday.

Well conditioned to the air of central Bamiyan province, they "skinned" 1,500 feet up a mountain on foot, at the front of a zigzagging line of huffing contestants. At the top, they hit the downhill portion well ahead of their far more experienced Western rivals.
The Second International Afghan Ski Challenge

View Slideshow
[SB10001424052970203370604577263743860216140]
Jonathan Levinson

First-place winner Khalil Reza at home in Ali Beg, a village near Bamiyan.

As the Afghan racers crossed the finish line one after another, cheers erupted from villagers and government officials. Even the U.S.-led military coalition put out a news release to celebrate the unlikely triumph of the Afghan athletes. "My brothers and sisters see me as a hero," exclaimed the champion, Khalil Reza, an illiterate 19-year-old who lives with his parents and seven siblings in a one-room mud hut.

Though Afghanistan has plenty of snow-covered mountains, skiing is an extreme novelty here. In Bamiyan, best known for its giant Buddha statues blown up by the Taliban a decade ago, mountainous villages with no electricity, kept warm by dung-fueled heaters, saw their first skier in early 2010.

Since then, the effort to implant ski culture in Bamiyan has brought here urban hip-hop slang, donkey-leaping snowboarders, and indiscriminately urinating ski bums who offend local sensibilities. It has also brought a small but welcome trickle of tourist dollars.

The effort faces many of the same challenges as the broader struggle for bitterly fractured Afghanistan. Though the predominantly ethnic Hazara Bamiyan province is one of Afghanistan's safest and attracts some vacationers—mainly foreigners based in Kabul—the Taliban increasingly operate on the access road from Kabul.

There are no commercial flights to Bamiyan, so participants in Friday's Afghan Ski Challenge had to charter a plane—and are still stuck in Bamiyan because snowfall has shut down the local airfield.

"Some people think it's a frivolous idea to support skiing in a war-torn country," says Christoph Zurcher, founder of the Afghan Ski Challenge, which held its second annual race this year with 10 newly trained local Afghan skiers and five foreigners—including this reporter.

The silver medalist—and the widely expected winner—in the race was Ali Shah Farhang. A 19-year-old Afghan peasant just a year ago, he seemed to be destined for a life of subsistence potato farming. Then, last winter, he watched three skiers schuss into his remote village.
[AFGHANSKI]

Italian mountain guide Ferdinando Rollando, with two female clients in tow, was looking to recruit local trainees in the village. Mr. Farhang told Mr. Rollando he dreamed of getting an education in Kabul and then becoming an engineer. Mr. Rollando said he replied: "There are 5,000 engineers in Kabul. They do not spend every day skiing with beautiful women. My job is obviously better."

The lesson stuck. Mr. Farhang has become one of Afghanistan's leading ski guides—and competitive skiers. After Friday's race, Mr. Farhang blamed his disappointing second place on a new pair of race day skis.

"The name on the skis said 'Alpine Touring Ski' and I thought it must be a very nice ski," said Mr. Farhang. "But my skis were completely bad. I was falling down 100 times."

Western diplomats first started skiing in Afghanistan at Chowk-e-Arghandeh mountain 30 minutes south of Kabul in the 1960s. There were two rope tows accessing 2,000 vertical feet of terrain and a small but vibrant après-ski scene in a stone ski lodge with a sun-drenched patio.

Kabul was a different place then, crowded with Western backpackers seeking cheap hashish on the overland Asia trail; many local women wore miniskirts and high heels rather than burqas. After a 1978 coup prompted a Soviet invasion and three decades of war, skiing disappeared along with the miniskirts and the hippies.

"That was before the jihad against the Russians, which changed the minds of the people," says Habiba Sarabi, Bamiyan's governor. "We have to change the minds of the people back," she adds. "Skiing will help do this."

In 2009, the Aga Khan Foundation, a private global development body headed by the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Shiite sect of Islam, decided that developing a ski industry in the Koh-e-Baba mountains might give impoverished locals a winter income, when their fields lie fallow.

At about the same time, Mr. Zurcher, a Swiss skier and journalist, made his first visit to the region. He decided a ski race would help motivate the locals to learn the sport, and he set about recruiting sponsors and participants.

Last winter's first Afghan Ski Challenge was, by all accounts, a disaster. Desperate to find local participants, Mr. Zurcher rustled up a crop of peddlers from the town bazaar who seemed more interested in making a quick buck than learning to ski.

With Western sponsors expecting Mr. Zurcher to deliver a race, "the local skiers quickly realized that we needed them more than they needed us," he recalls.

During the monthlong training period, the recruits smoked cigarettes and steadily upped their demands for lunch and other perks. Mr. Zurcher says he shelled out $5,000 of his own money to bring off the race, which did happen. But it was little more than a glorified photo op.

Mr. Zurcher was ready to give up. But the Afghan ski bug had bit.

Disaster or not, it left the event's sponsors wanting more. So, too, did dozens of interested skiers from around the world who began emailing Mr. Zurcher to ask about entering the 2012 contest.

One of the main sponsors, the Swiss watchmaker Tissot, called Mr. Zurcher in December, eager to get in on the 2012 event.

Mr. Zurcher relented. In small villages, the ski bug was similarly spreading. Local teenagers who had never seen skis before last winter, began taking to the hills with homemade skis, made by nailing flattened tin cans to the bottom of wood planks and tying them to their feet with twine.

For this year's championship, the Afghan competitors were handpicked from the mountain villages, and given two months of daily training by professional Western ski instructors and mountain guides. The governor and a host of local officials trekked out to the starting line to watch.

The winner, Mr. Reza, showed off his booty after the race: a trophy, a $745 Tissot watch and an $650 Gore-Tex jacket.

Most important, as Mr. Fernando, the Italian ski guide, had once assured the young Afghans, Mr. Reza believed the win should improve his chances with women. "This victory will help my marriage prospects," he said.
 
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