KABUL: Former Afghan skiing champion Hamayoon Kargar is a lonely man with a mountain to climb.

He’s trying, almost single-handedly it seems, to promote skiing in his country after decades of war. With a pair of ancient, battered skis and tatty poles, Kargar trudges up a small hill in the snow-clad Afghan capital. He swooshes down in seconds, displaying the skills that before the war took him to international competitions in Europe and Japan.

For the first time in decades, skiing has returned to Afghanistan. “Since the start of the war in Afghanistan skiing stopped. People don’t know what skiing means or how to do it,” Kargar, 47, told Reuters on a sunny but bitter day. Crowds of children emerged from nearby homes to play in the snow and watch Kargar, who was soon joined by his brother and a cousin on the tiny slope. Kargar is from a family of keen skiers who promoted the sport before the country slipped into more than 20 years of war and chaos.

“We established teams at Kabul University and at schools for the children,” he said. “At that time, people from Germany and England brought skiing equipment to Afghanistan. Our family also went abroad and bought equipment.” A ski resort complete with a ski lift was set up at a place called Arghandab, not far from Kabul, but during the war mines were laid across the slopes and they have yet to be cleared, despite an appeal to a demining agency, he said.

Mined mountain: “The mountain is full of mines and it is dangerous to go there but it’s a very nice place, bigger than here,” he said. Kargar, who is also coach of the national football team, wants to introduce skiing to a new generation but he said Afghanistan would need help if people are to get back on the slopes. “I request the international community to provide us with equipment because we can’t find it here in Afghanistan,” he said.

“People are interested in skiing but they can’t buy the equipment because it is very expensive and it’s not available.”

Afghanistan sent a tiny team to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece but no one is going to the Winter Olympics in Italy next month, said Deen Mohammad Safi, a senior official at the Afghan National Olympic Committee. But Safi said he hoped a team of skiers would be ready for the 2010 Winter Games. “Thirty years ago, we had a very good ski team,” Safi said on Saturday. “We’re getting ready, very soon we will have a ski team,” Safi said, adding that he had asked the ministry of defence to clear the mines from the old resort at Arghandab. reuters