War and golf: A view of Afghanistan from the first tee

By Mark Bendeich

KABUL (Reuters) - Golfers who tee-off at the Kabul Golf Course don't have to worry about their balls landing in the traditional golf hazards of sand bunkers and ponds.

The Afghan capital's only golf course is one giant hazard.

From tee to green, there is not a patch of grass; only weeds, rocks, baked-hard mud and the odd strand of barbed wire.

Even the "greens" are treacherous and wrongly named: made from compacted pools of black, oily sand, they swarm with nests of angry ants.

But Kabul Golf Club has become more than a unique test of golfing skill and nerve since it re-opened three years ago, after U.S.-led forces swept the Taliban militia from power in 2001.

In Afghanistan's sad world of war, kidnappings, beheadings and extreme poverty, the 40-year-old course on the edge of Kabul also offers a glimmer of the past and a distant view of better times.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, when Afghanistan was a peaceful kingdom and a romantic destination for Western travelers, the club was a playground for Afghan royalty -- and an instant obsession for a young Afghan boy called Muhammad Afzal Abdul.

"I came here one day from school and people play golf, two or three American people," recalled Afzal, 48, who is now the club's golf pro' and manager.

"I watch (one of them) and he said, you like to hit the ball? And he gave me one ball and I shoot it over the road, first time. He gave me one club and one ball and he said, you practice."

Back then, the fairways were grassed and held trees, Afzal said through broken teeth as he squinted at the barren course, his bearded face creased from decades of war and hardship.

Nestled beside an alpine lake and overlooked by snowy peaks, the nine-hole course can still conjure up an image of its original charm, the fields of Afzal's youth. But not for long.

Reminders of war are everywhere: an old Soviet tank stands on a nearby hill, still pointed at Kabul, and the sixth hole, a long par 5, is flanked by the ruins of a Soviet army outpost. A string of barbed wire trails across the first fairway.

And until U.S. troops invaded in 2001, the stout little pro' shop was home to fighters from the Taliban, who Afzal said jailed him for three months because he had worked with foreigners.

FIELD OF DREAMS

Afzal, who plays off no handicap and won several tournaments in Kabul in the 1970s, said the course had largely closed after the Soviets invaded in 1979, though some intrepid players still ventured out at times.