Kite Fighting: A different kind of War in Afghanistan

From a Novel

"Every winter, districts in Kabul held a kite-fighting tournament. If you were a boy living in Kabul, the day of the tournament was undeniably the highlight of the cold season. I never slept the night before the tournament. I'd roll from side to side, make shadow animals on the wall, even sit on the balcony in the dark, a blanket wrapped around me. I felt like a soldier trying to sleep in the trenches the night before a major battle. And that wasn't so far off. In Kabul, fighting kites was a little like going to war" 
(Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner, P.49-50)

Just about every little boy has flown a kite during childhood, but kite running takes it to the next level with duels in the sky. Afghanistan's deep history of kite running is now well known across the globe, thanks to the book and subsequent 2007 movie The Kite Runner, but kite running is popular in other countries across the globe, too. Banned during the Taliban’s rule, kite flying is once again the main recreational escape for Afghan boys and some men.

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How it works?
The goal of the sport is to pull your opponent's kite out of the sky (sending the vanquished aircraft to the ground) and slice it by wrapping your kite string around the other kite's string. In order to cut a kite's string you need special strings that are coated with an abrasive coating. String is coated with a resin made of glue and finely crushed glass, which turns it into a blade. Then once the kite is cut loose, the real battle of kite running begins.

While the kite is falling from high above the city or park, everyone races to be the first to retrieve the fallen kite as his or her prize. Buildings, trees, power lines can all make the kite's path to the ground more interesting and the capture more challenging.

This is war. The sole reason for kites, Afghans will tell you, is to fight them, and a single kite aloft is nothing but an unspoken challenge to a neighbor.

The challenges

The sport can be dangerous as people run along after the kites gazing toward the sky, ignoring traffic and other obstacles. It has even been banned in Pakistan where kite flying was once a major part of their spring festival, Basant, due to the glass and metal coatings some used to give the string extra cutting power.  These doctored kite strings can also lead to serious cuts.

The Strings

Kite-fighting string in Afghanistan was traditionally homemade by a laborious process that involved coating cotton string with a concoction of crushed glass and glue. But factories in other more-developed kite-flying nations like Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia and China now churn out tens of thousands of spools of machine-made nylon fighting string that swamp the Afghan market.

Follow a kite’s string to its source and you will most likely find an Afghan boy standing on top of his roof or in an empty lot, playing the line in deep concentration.

The big kite-fighting days are Fridays throughout the Spring, summer and fall.

Where it's played?

Kite running is popular in many Asian countries. The history is probably most deeply rooted in Afghanistan, where kite running has been a tradition for centuries. However, during the Taliban's rule, kite flying was banned.

“Packs of boys too poor to buy their own equipment were sprinting after defeated kites as they fell to earth. They were the kite runners” 

New York Times Reporter KIRK SEMPLE