KABUL — Is the world ready for a sport played with a headless goat carcass?

Haji Abdul Rashid thinks it is and has big plans: corporate sponsors, television rights and beyond.

"We want it to become an Olympic sport," says Rashid, who heads the Buzkashi Federation.

This hugely popular Afgan sport even has a major impact upon Afghanistan's politics!

Afghan players on horseback fight for control of a carcass during a game on November 6 in Kabul, Afghanistan. By Majid Saeedi, Getty Images

In Afghanistan, galloping to get one's goat.

By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY http://www.usatoday.com/ Haji Abdul Rashid thinks it is and has big plans: corporate sponsors, television rights and beyond.

"We want it to become an Olympic sport," says Rashid, who heads the Buzkashi Federation.

To understand how ambitious — even crazy — this is, consider the game. Buzkashi, which means "goat grabbing," is a violent sport with virtually no rules. Players, called chapandaz, gallop at breakneck speed over a dusty field, fighting over a dead animal without a head.

The game has no rounds or time limits. Galloping horses regularly spill off the field, sending terrified spectators running for safety. Some games are played with 12-man teams; others are scored individually with hundreds of horses careening around the field.

"It's very violent," says Maqsud, who also has seven buzkashi horses. "Animal rights activists wouldn't like it."

A spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, Mark Adams, said he was not aware of any overtures from buzkashi officials. He said there might be concerns that the sport is not widely known and has no governing body that regulates it.

"I'm not sure it's a universal sport," Adams said.

The Taliban, which banned nearly every other form of amusement in Afghanistan, was unable to abolish the game entirely. It managed to thrive in the mountainous north, under the control of powerful anti-Taliban commanders.

"This is an 18-year-old kid called Hamat. He'd been a Taliban for two weeks. He just came from school in Pakistan but he was actually a local. His parents didn't know that he had joined the Taliban. They thought he was still studying in Afghanistan. And there he is, holding his RPG." Photograph by Nir Rosen

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Taliban imposed a rule that prevented the use of a carcass, allowing only the skins of calves or goats stuffed with straw. The Taliban considered it sinful to kill an animal without using its meat. Buzkashi enthusiasts, such as Rashid, still speak bitterly of that era. The stuffed skins easily tore apart.

More recently, buzkashi played a role in the Afghan election. One of the game's largest patrons in Kabul is Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a vice president and a controversial figure because of his background as a notorious warlord. He sponsors many matches, which isn't lost on the audiences.

"That's why he got so many votes for (President Hamid) Karzai," Rashid says.

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