Friendly U.S.-Afghan basketball match turns violent in Kabul

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Posted 4:19PM on Friday, March 22, 2002

KABUL, Afghanistan - A friendly game of basketball between a U.S. and Afghan team turned violent when spectators kicked a fallen American player in the head -- and a guard rushing to protect him unintentionally shot and wounded two Afghans. The incident Thursday at Kabul's main stadium wasn't the first time an event staged to foster goodwill with Afghans has gotten out of control, and an Afghan sports official suggested the games should be put off until the security situation in the capital improves. The American squad, which included one British player, pulled out of the four-day basketball tournament with Afghan teams because of the violence. The game was friendly until an American player running for the ball tumbled near the stands crowded with Afghans celebrating the Persian New Year, said Flight Lt. Tony Marshall, a spokesman for the 4,500-strong international peacekeeping force in Kabul. Two Afghan spectators kicked him in the head, according to Marshall and witnesses, bringing an Afghan guard from the U.S. Embassy to his defense. Trying to keep the crowd back, the guard cocked his Kalashnikov rifle, and unintentionally fired off a round as he used it to press back fans, Marshall said. Two spectators suffered gunshot wounds in their legs, said a witness, Wahid Ullah, the stadium's maintenance chief. U.S. personnel surrounded the Afghan guard and hustled him out of the stadium for his own safety, Marshall said. He has been turned over to Afghan police. The game ended, and the spectators who kicked the American disappeared into the crowd, witnesses said. One of the wounded, Habibul Rahman, attributed the incident to fans becoming overexcited. "It was not about people not liking Americans," he said from his hospital bed, his fractured leg elevated in a cast. Nevertheless, Rahman, 19, said he wasn't sure he'd go back to another such match. Since the arrival of international peacekeepers in the Afghan capital, sporting events and community visits have become important gestures toward civilians. But while Afghans appreciate the goodwill exchanges, a sporting official, Abdul Zabur Azizi, said security wasn't sufficient to guarantee the safety of spectators and players. Last month, a soccer match between Afghans and international peacekeepers was marred when Afghan police beat back crowds surging to get through the stadium gates. "Until our Interior Ministry is able to control the crowd security, we should not have these kinds of matches," said Azizi, a consultant for the Kabul Olympic committee and a member of the Afghan basketball federation. Marshall, the peacekeeping spokesman, referred questions about whether the Americans or other troops would rethink their goodwill policy to the U.S. Embassy, which didn't return repeated calls seeking comment Friday. Not all sporting events between international forces and Afghans have ended violently. This week, British members of the international peacekeeping force played a cricket match with an Afghan team -- complete with cucumber triangle sandwiches, scones and tea. The Afghans were ahead when rain stopped play. In other developments: --The State Department ordered dependents and nonessential workers at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and three consulates to leave Pakistan. The order came five days after a U.S. Embassy employee and her daughter were killed with three other people in a grenade attack on a church in Islamabad. --Robert Patrick John Finn was sworn in as the new U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Finn, a former U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, said his appointment demonstrates America's commitment to the war-ravaged country. --U.S. forces operating from Bagram destroyed an ammunition cache discovered in the Shah-e-Kot valley, site of the biggest U.S.-led offensive in the Afghan war. --Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum supervised the freeing of 250 prisoners as part of an amnesty in honor of the Persian New Year. The ethnic Pashtun prisoners, who have been held in a crowded prison in Dostum's hometown of Shibergan, were chosen for release either because they were very young, very old or ill.