I really enjoyed getting to spend some time this semester learning more about sports and its role in Afghan culture. Having grown up in the United States, where sports forms such a large aspect of the nation's culture, it was interesting to see how sports are perceived in Afghanistan. I also chose to pursue the topic, aside from my own interest in sports, as I believe that sports are one of the few truly global activities. Ultimately, soccer is the same whether you are in Afghanistan, Brazil or the U.S.
Whether it was learning more about Afghanistan's physically mind-boggling national sport, buzkashi, or the nation's intermittent participation in the Summer Olympics, I was able to touch upon a lot of aspects of Afghan culture that extended beyond sports. As a result, this realization pushed me towards a cultural project that not only focused on sports but the underlying drivers that determined the way different sports were perceived in Afghanistan. Therefore, after months of pondering the role of sports in Afghanistan, I decided to write about how the Taliban influenced sports in Afghanistan and what has changed in the nation's sports culture after the Taliban's fall. Learning about sports in Afghanistan truly exposed me to social and, even more so, political aspects of Afghanistan that I had not previously thought I would be encountering when researching a topic so seemingly innocuous. Nonetheless, I am quite happy that I chose to spend my semester learning about the impact sports has had in Afghanistan as I found out a lot more about the nation's culture through a very interesting lens. That said, to get a better understanding of my findings, refer to my cultural project.
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