“I feel like we've been dragged into the black hole in the universe and just left there. I feel like if I look in front of me, I don't see anything, but I see just, from the ground up to the sky, it's just dirt.”
Farid Noori is in a bleak mood. Currently studying for a master's degree at the University of Arkansas, he’s the founder of the Mountain Bike Afghanistan, a non-profit that aims to develop the sport in his home country, but his work has come to a crunching halt as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Rather than organising events, donating bikes or coordinating local clubs, he’s now dedicating his time to evacuating mountain bikers out of the country whose lives are endangered by participating in the sport.
We caught up with him to talk about the Afghan mountain biking community, to better understand the current situation and to share some ways the Pinkbike community could help.
The Growth of Mountain Biking in AfghanistanWhile people in the Western world may think of Afghanistan as an arid, empty desert, it’s actually mostly mountainous including the Hindu Kush range, which covers roughly two thirds of the country's area. The country may not be an epicentre of mountain biking but it had begun to foster a small but dedicated community of riders in the past few years of relative peace.
Despite a lack of funding, resources or distributors, hub cities such as Herat near the Iranian border and Bamyan in the centre of the country are now home to hundreds of riders. The sport was starting to gain traction in the mainstream too -
the Hindukush MTB Challenge, a cross country race that follows the XCC and XCO two-day format of the World Cups, was broadcast on television and the Danny MacAskill inspired Drop and Ride club was featured in soda commercials.
Afghanistan’s women were also starting to embrace cycling after years of repression under Soviet and Taliban rule. The country’s first female cycling team was documented in ‘Little Queens of Kabul’ and was later nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Those women's exploits didn’t go unnoticed and at the first Hindukush XC MTB race in 2018, of the 50 competitors, 20 were women. This year, one of the team's riders, Masomah Ali Zada, was selected to participate at Tokyo 2020 with the IOC Refugee Olympic Team and became the first-ever Afghan cyclist at the Olympics.
While mountain bikes are expensive toys to mess around on in the woods for most of us, Farid believes they offer something greater to Afghan youth. He recalls his own experience first trying the sport as an exchange student in high school, saying, “I was literally a 40-year-old in the body of a teenager… I could talk like a history book because these things were injected in my head. I mean, I lived with that reality. I lived with the burden of solving Afghanistan's problem at a young age.”
He continued, “What was I to do with all this political crap? I needed to be on a tennis court. I needed to be on a bike. So, that's when I really realized the importance of play and how it can help people deal with trauma, especially living in a place like Afghanistan. I mean, with the events of the past month, I think there's a whole new level of trauma that is even harder than what people were experiencing before.”
Evacuating Afghanistan’s mountain bikersUnfortunately, the progress the country was making has come to a grinding halt. The Afghanistan Cycling Federation told us “the situation is very bad” and “all activities are stopped.” The immediate priority for Fazli Ahmad Fazli, the president of the Federation, is to evacuate the female riders associated with the governing body as they are in danger of reprisals from the Taliban regime. There are reports of some women dismantling their bikes and burning their clothing but for others it’s simply too dangerous to stay.
Farid is working with
Outride on a program for 28 cyclists, primarily women, and their families who are in urgent need of evacuation. So far seven cyclists, including the team captain, have been safely evacuated from Afghanistan but Farid is now struggling to find the rest of the group flights. He said, “we've given up hope on the US military to evacuate these people because they were on their lists several times, couldn't do it. In the remainder of the time, we are trying to use chartered flights for the athletes.”
At this current time, it costs approximately $5,000 to evacuate each individual but as the August 31 deadline rapidly approaches, their flight and evacuation options decrease and costs increase. Farid is hoping to raise $250,000 with a stretch goal of $500,000 to safely evacuate and resettle the remaining cyclists and has so far raised $65,000. All of the organizers have donated their time for the project so all money donated will go straight into the evacuation with any leftover used for resettlement.
Farid's effort is one of a number of disconnected efforts to evacuate cyclists from Afghanistan. Alongside individual fundraisers,
Cycling News reports that UCI President David Lappartient is working with Afghan authorities to protect more than 60 athletes and their families who are in danger. While the Italian Cycling Federation is working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to find solutions to help evacuate athletes and their families.
For information on how to help with the evacuation efforts, head to the bottom of this piece.
The future for Afghanistan’s mountain bikersMountain biking is expected to all but stop for the riders who remain. While men were allowed to use bikes as a form of transport previously under the Taliban, it’s unlikely anyone will be able to throw on a pair of bib shorts and head for a proper ride.
Instead, Farid is now turning his attention to Afghan communities around the world. With his work on pause back home, he now wants to help the citizens that have been displaced in the meantime. He pondered, “Can we form a team outside of Afghanistan that doesn't bow to the rules consisting of men and women? And they can go and be a voice for the people who are stuck there, not just their ability to cycle, but any other aspect of life."
He continued, “We're already thinking about how can we use the bike to get a lot of the Afghans to experience this joy here too. For me, riding in Colorado Rockies has been a way to reconnect with Afghanistan even if I'm not physically there, but I feel at home in those places. At that point, the cycling community can have a strong impact, whether it's with gear donations in the future, whether it's with organizing events. I might do a Hindukush Mountain Bike Challenge in the US, why not?”
But Farid also isn’t giving up on mountain biking flourishing again in Afghanistan. He said, “Afghan people feel very misunderstood. I think that it's nice that the world has turned attention to Afghanistan after Kabul fell, but there was a time when Afghans were desperately trying to prevent that and voice their worries, their opinions about what the world should do and people didn't really care.
“That is past now. What's important for the world to know is that the Afghan people are a very proud and hospitable, friendly, kind bunch. Everywhere you go, people will open their hearts and their homes to you, regardless of going through so much pain... Right now, history took a different turn and everyone's down and everyone is running out and fleeing but there will still be people there, there will still be those mountains. Governments will change, but people will be there.”
How to HelpMountain Bike Afghanistan’s website can be found
here but most of the website has been made private to protect the identities of the people involved. Donations in the short term will be passed on to Human Rights Foundation but will be restricted specifically to the Afghanistan Cyclist Evacuation and Resettlement efforts. Farid also asks the Pinkbike community to subscribe to the Mountain Bike Afghanistan mailing list to keep up to date with the charity’s programs.
For more information, click here.
A full list of ways to help Afghan Refugees that is being updated daily can be found
here.
It’s stories like these that bring more people into experiencing empathy and compassion for a issue that they may have previously dismissed due to the interpretations of stories and current events that been portrayed through certain agendas and the lenses of tunnel vision, default sources of “news”.
This is good journalism and I applaud pb for publishing this.
If your house burned down and you are crying on the street because all the people you loved stayed in the fire, wouldn't you feel it inappropriate if some guy asked you if your bike survived the fire?
Mtbing is not important to larger real world issues...yet, this group taking over will force it to stop. Perhaps photos of the women who dared do something so offensive as ride a bike will surface...and they'll be murdered. What else is affected? What other seemingly innocuous occupations or hobbies will lead to death?
This article demonstrates why everyone should care...while still "staying in their lane" b/c it uses MTB as a center piece.
I responded that people get randomly shot in lots of places…that doesn’t make any of them even a little bit like Afghanistan.
The reason the article is important is bc Afghanistan and a taliban takeover is NOT like anywhere else in the whole world…random street shootings or not
OHHHHH…I forgot about Hitler…you’re right Godwin…you win the internet!
As I said you tried to reduce the argument to a single common denominator. Which is simplistic and stupid. Don’t blame me for your ideas.
Read my original comment…it’s pretty clear I get it.
And yes you reduced what’s happening in Afghanistan to Chicago by lowest common denominator and adding the word “random”. You brought that up. Not me. There is nothing random about the Taliban.
You get your comment because you’re a fool at best and a tool if not worse.
Keep sprinkling shit on your story. It’s making you sound insane. Well done.
Sorry you’re wrong…but you’re probably used to it, so I’m sure it’s fine.
Hint: It means I was questioning your comment...b/c it was dumb. But you go on....just keep on being wrong.
There was two whole sentences in my initial comment. You didn’t even address the second. Rather you thought you were clever and wanted to play stupid reductionist games. Context matters lad.
Keep pedalling boi, your almost there.
Be realistic.
Fair argument, but I'm clearly not understanding what a murderous extremist government is then.
Does this money go to the Taliban to let people leave?
We should have never been there in the 1st place. Only Afghans can fix Afghanistan. Not America, not Canada, not the UK, or France, or Germany.
I went to a listen to an ex-Muslim teacher. He said there is a saying in Islam: “Me against my brother. Me and my brother against my cousin. Me, my brother and my cousin against the World”. This is the history of Islam and it will never change. The Taliban is actually the most dedicated Muslim group by enacting Sharia Law as taught in the religion. A very tragic way for anyone to live. All that said, the Afghans do need to fix their own country. But it will require turning away from Islam which will likely never happen.
All descendants of Abraham. Still acting out Cain & Abel. It's almost laughable.
PS: The middle east is more than just a religion. You fool.
Africa was similarly completely messed up by European colonisers.
Christianity was also a main driver behind these events too, so a main digger of this 'black hole'. And in the US Christianity is pretty much as extremist as Islam can be.
research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/3653 if you want to do some reading.
Maybe(well almost for sure) your god does not exist. Nor does the god of the taliban or any god ever.
Thoughts & prayers is exactly what has led us to where we are today.
Pray for those left behind!
How will they contact usa?
2,372 soldiers died in Afghanistan, have some respect.
If one ever needs an example for objective morality, it's as simple as they come - one culture allows people (be they men or women) enjoy such freedoms, while the other might kill them for that.
Wish you the best of luck in helping those riders.
www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/us/politics/trump-biden-afghan-taliban.html
Biden pulled our military BEFORE even evacuating our state Department people! Who does that? You NEVER do that! We basically handed 86 billion worth of state of the art military equipment over to the worst terrorists on the planet! No one believes for a second that if they'd pulled this, Trump wouldn't have immediately bombed them back to the Stone Age. This would have never happened this way. Biden is incompetent, diminished, ignorant, arrogant, and flat out evil. The horror coming out of that place is only the beginning.
It was predictable as well. As a 32 year old senator Biden said this. . .in 1 9 7 5 ! ! ! (That's how long this imbecile has been a politician.)
"I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals. … The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.”
Yes, it IS Biden's fault.
My point is, you don't care about the afghans other than when it suits your political cheerleading and fanboyism. Left leaning or right, doesn't matter, your all the same in that regard
The current administration was only left with the choice of ramping up the troops significantly or pulling the plug.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-taliban-peace-deal-us-withdrawal-b1907241.html%3famp
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/20/trump-peace-deal-taliban
www.google.com/amp/s/www.axios.com/trump-taliban-agreement-doha-biden-8dabe136-6dce-4e43-9289-98551bd47ed6.html
Trump: dear Taliban, we will let u live unless u allow terror/harm any usa allies.
Taliban: uh ok
Now, Biden has another bengali bc he put state dept folks in charge + his main generals are Harvard types, not the generals Trump used which were more Patton like.
Reason: the new government over there won't let you.
Purpose of this article: to exploit the situation over there for clicks.
Reason: because this article can't help anyone over there.
While no doubt any aid is good, the head line and some of these burgeoning comments come off as more than tone deaf.
"jomacba (2 mins ago)
I would love to see Afghanistan represented at the world champs! Hard to be the best in the world, if the whole world isn't there."
"jdeuce (21 mins ago)
tell the taliban “not Ebike, traditional bike”
While PB recently has felt a need to take on more social efforts than ever before. File this "crisis", "debacle" whatever you want to classify it as, as something that is not only outside of PB's sphere of influence but outside of anything that even remotely concerns anything possibly mountain bike related . And to conflate anything "mountain biking" with this disaster is so disingenuous its IMO disgusting. Any NATO sympathetic Afghan is currently being executed in the streets be it janitor or translator. Girls over the age of 15 are being taken as "spoils of war" and married to Taliban combatants. Women are not allowed to be educated(yeah this is a bit in Handmaid's Tale, but its IRL in Afghanistan AGAIN).
To bring mountain biking into this discussion at all is inappropriate. END OF STORY.
We're all here because we're mountain bikers, and this story serves as a reminder that even in war torn regions of the world people have been able to discover the joy that comes from riding a bicycle. Rather than being disingenuous in the slightest, I see this as being a way to humanize a situation that can be all too easy to ignore.
And yes, I'm sure there will be plenty of tone deaf comments (there are always are), but I'm also hopeful that an article like this can serve as a reminder of how lucky the vast majority of us are just to be able to mountain bike at all.
And yes those of us lucky enough to have freedom are reminded of that when we see what’s hapebing in other areas of the world.
Besides that this article is important because it illustrates just how many rights the Taliban is taking away from Afghans. How insane does a regime need to be to take away riding a bike? So while "Taliban doesn't like mountain biking" might not seem like a huge deal due to the current situation out there; if someone came up to you and said "we are going to kill you if you go mountain biking" or they will kill any female member of your family that owns a bike, or your local bike group has to set everything to private for fear of being killed, you'd probably see it as a pretty big injustice.
I think you are looking at this article from the wrong angle. Instead of looking at it from the angle of Afghans can't go mountain biking, look at it from the angle of people are afraid for their lives because they are mountain bikers. There are people active on pinkbike from Afghanistan, people we have talked to on here. If the Taliban finds out who they are, they are dead.
got a source for that? wtf is this
He had promised to do it on his watch, but like a lot of things, I t never got done.