Boxing is risky at the best of times, but Hasib Malikzada now faces one of his most unpredictable opponents yet — the uncertainties of life as an Afghan refugee.
Just 19 years old, the lightweight amateur champ of Afghanistan is stuck in Serbia following his team’s decision to not return home after competing at the International Boxing Association’s world championships in Belgrade last month.
In the weeks since the tournament, Malikzada and the members of the Afghanistan national boxing team have been bouncing between hotels, while finding the occasional gym for training.
Photo: AFP
Even amid the relentless bustle, their new life in Serbia is an island of stability compared with the chaos at home.
“After the Taliban came ... we couldn’t continue boxing,” Malikzada told reporters, adding that his gym in Kabul closed shortly after the insurgents overthrew the Afghan government in August.
Life after Kabul’s fall to the Taliban has been mired with worries ever since, said Malikzada, who fears that his family will be targeted for their links with the ousted government.
His brothers had also joined the fledgling resistance in the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul — where former government soldiers and militia fighters briefly made a last stand against the Taliban, he said.
“If the Taliban find us ... they will kill us,” Malikzada said.
Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are believed to have fled the country in the past few months, hoping to escape persecution and a collapsing economy in the face of international sanctions and a banking crisis that has mired much of the population in deepening poverty.
Like most of the team — 11 of whom are now in Serbia along with two officials — Malikzada’s life has been overshadowed by the conflict that followed the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Boxing offered a rare refuge during the dark days of the war — when waves of suicide bombers ravaged Kabul, and rampant crime and the threat of being kidnapped kept the population on edge.
The boxing gym provided an environment where violence could be managed — with rounds, weight classes and rules. Training partners became close friends, helping release stress through sparring sessions.
“Boxing refreshed our minds, our bodies and also our health,” said Tawfiqullah Sulaimani, a 20-year-old heavyweight on the national squad.
After the Taliban took power, Sulaimani and other boxers kept training in secret, hiding gear in bags as they moved in between discrete locations to practice. To reach Belgrade, the team kept a low profile as they passed through checkpoints en route to the Iranian border and later secured last-minute Serbian visas in Tehran.
Running on little sleep after days of travel, the team arrived in Serbia in time to cut weight and compete, achieving “good” results, despite the stressful sojourn.
“We didn’t sleep, but we did a good performance every day,” Afghan Boxing Federation secretary-general Waheedullah Hameedi said.
Much of the responsibility for the team’s future now falls on Hameedi’s shoulders.
Glued to his phone in between practice sessions, the 24-year-old fires off messages to a range of contacts across the globe, with the hope that someone can find a way to help his athletes.
Hameedi is all too familiar with the Taliban’s brutality.
In 2019, the insurgents assassinated his father — who was also a boxing official — for recruiting women to box, he said.
“I have received too many warnings,” Hameedi told reporters, adding that he was advised by family and friends not to return to Afghanistan.
During its rule of Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban declared boxing to be “against human dignity” and banned the sport along with most other forms of entertainment.
The Taliban has yet to make a formal ruling on boxing’s future, but it has sought to promote a number of sports since taking power, especially the country’s national cricket team.
Even so, scores of Afghan athletes have fled abroad — including female soccer and basketball players — following the Taliban takeover, stirring resentment from the country’s new rulers.
“I expect the heads of all federations who are still abroad as a result of propaganda and rumors that they return to their country and live together with us,” said Nazar Mohammad Motmaeen, the Taliban-appointed director for physical education and sports, during a speech in Kabul last month. “The honor of every athlete is in his own country.”
However, for the boxers in Serbia, life outside of Afghanistan is far from ideal.
“This is a painful story,” Hameedi said. “Nobody wants to leave their motherland.”
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