KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
From her wheelchair, Maryam Samimi punched the air as the referee’s whistle signaled her basketball team’s win in an Afghan national tournament, a moment of joy in a country often unkind to those missing limbs.
Many amputees in Afghanistan languish without access to care and become depressed and isolated. And with mines and unexploded ordinance still scattered across this country ravaged by decades of nonstop war, more will be maimed or lose limbs from explosions.
However, an International Committee of the Red Cross program offering sports to amputees has seen hundreds sign up to play wheelchair basketball.
Afghanistan is often described as one big minefield, with experts estimating that 10 million mines — mostly from the former Soviet Union but also from the United States, Britain, Belgium and Italy — have been dropped or laid across the country. The explosives, including those planted by the Taliban, continue to kill and maim.
Some 40,500 amputees have registered with the ICRC’s Orthopedic Project in Afghanistan since 1988. Of that figure, 67 percent are victims of mines and 76 percent are civilians, statistics of war that has lasted more than 30 years and which, even as most of the U.S.-led foreign combat forces are withdrawing, shows no sign of ending. The true number of amputees living in Afghanistan is likely even higher.
Four years ago, the ICRC decided to recruit amputees for sports teams as a way to help them both physically and mentally. Now, hundreds of amputees play wheelchair basketball in teams in six of the country’s 34 provinces, with the best of them playing in the national league.
Jess Markt, of Boulder, Colorado, served as a referee at the national tournament. He has been travelling to Afghanistan to coach wheelchair basketball players since 2009 and now spends up to four months a year in the country. At home, he plays point guard for the Denver Rolling Nuggets in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association and coaches the women’s team.
And for Samimi, who lost both her feet above the ankle after stepping on a land mine when she was 6, the joy of her Mazar-if- Sharif beating Herat 33-9 wasn’t just for the final score.
“I am very happy that we won, but I am happy for them, too,” she said.
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