POLITICS: FATA’S SPORTING ORPHANS
Sher Ali Afridi is renowned as one of the fastest disabled bowlers in the world. A disabled professional cricketer hailing from Bara, Khyber Agency, his success has little to do with anyone else. After all, his native Khyber Agency is a wasteland of sporting activity.
The disabled hero was born with one leg. He got a prosthetic leg only to try out his luck in sports. Dreams soon turned into reality as he was picked by the Peshawar Disabled Cricket Club. From here on, his journey to international stardom began in earnest.
Although Sher Ali is an inspiration for upcoming players in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), he is not alone in experiencing sporting orphanhood. The same is the tale with Yasir Afridi and Ateeq Shinwari in football. Riaz Afridi, Shahenshah and Usman Shinwari have carved a name for themselves in cricket while Maria Toorpakai Wazir has brought sporting laurels to Pakistan. Other players from Fata including Noor Aslam, Hayat Nazeer and Zahoor Khan Shinwari have also won many national sports titles.
Despite the emergence of talent from the tribal areas including Maria Toorpakai Wazir and Usman Khan Shinwari, there is little governmental interest in sporting affairs and an absence of facilities to boot
Yet, despite the tall claims from concerned officials, the Fata Sports Directorate at the Fata Secretariat in Peshawar is unable to formulate either a sports or youth policy to exploit the tremendous sports talent of youth in Fata.
Fata has neither a sports complex nor a sports coaching academy across its seven tribal agencies. The playgrounds are rented in Peshawar even for annual sports events.
As per the available record of the Fata Sports Directorate, out of a total annual development programme (ADP) for sports activities, the tribal agencies get Rs335 million, which comes from its share of 1.58 percent of the national allocation. The Fata Olympics Association (FOA) gets no annual grant in aid for its various sports activities.
What makes matters worse is that no player from Fata gets sponsorship for participating in any international sports event. The condition is even worse for girl players in Fata.
Zarghuna Wazir, who hails from North Waziristan, is a huge sports fan and a student at a Peshawar college. She says that sports activities for girl players in Fata are limited only to schools and at the inter-college level. She wants to participate in sports festivals and at the national and international levels but she does not know how her dreams can be realised.
“Female players in Fata are not lacking in talent or steam,” she says. “Girls here may even have more potential than the men but the sports high-ups of Fata never encourage them, which in my opinion is doing sheer injustice to them.
Noted martial arts player Farhad Shinwari has been running the Khyber Martial Arts Academy (KMAA) in the Landikotal subdivision of Khyber Agency for the last 16 years, albeit from his personal resources. He has represented Pakistan as a team coach in Korea, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Thailand. He has also performed as referee and judge. Farhad says that he has trained hundreds of young martial arts enthusiasts despite immense financial constraints.
“One of my students, Ghani Khan, contested in the Asia Karate Tournament in South Korea in 2016 and bagged the third position in the 85+ kilograms weight category. He also contested in the world karate championship in Kazakhstan earlier this year in July,” he says, and adds that his coaching academy doesn’t even have a mat.