Afghanistan’s national buzkashi federation said on Thursday that the country’s team had withdrawn from the 2026 World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan, a decision taken after suitable horses were not made available for the Afghan riders.<\/p>\n
Ghulam-Sarwar Jalal, head of Afghanistan’s Buzkashi Federation, said the team refused to play its scheduled match against Mongolia because it did not have appropriate horses. Following the decision, the game was recorded as a 3-0 win for Mongolia.<\/p>\n
The withdrawal came a day after Afghanistan lost its opening match 4-1 to Uzbekistan. Afghanistan had been placed in Group A alongside Uzbekistan, hosts Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia.<\/p>\n
According to information from Afghan sports bodies, the country’s delegation travelled to Kyrgyzstan earlier this week with 12 members. The delegation included 10 riders, one coach and Ghulam-Sarwar Jalal.<\/p>\n
The sixth edition of the World Nomad Games is being held in Kyrgyzstan from August 31 to September 6. The opening ceremony took place at Bishkek Arena, and the main sports and cultural events are being held in the Issyk-Kul region.<\/p>\n
Kyrgyz state news agency Kabar reported that more than 3,000 athletes from 109 countries are taking part in this edition of the games. On the first day of competition in kok-boru at the Kok-Boru arena in Cholpon-Ata, Afghanistan lost 4-1 to Uzbekistan, while Kyrgyzstan beat Mongolia 12-1.<\/p>\n
The World Nomad Games were first held in 2014 and focus on showcasing traditional sports and the cultural heritage of nomadic communities. The competition includes horse riding events, traditional wrestling, archery and traditional intellectual games. Kyrgyzstan is hosting the event for the fourth time, after staging the first three editions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afghanistan withdrew from the 2026 World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan after failing to secure suitable horses for its buzkashi team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}