Afghan skiers not in Beijing due to passport issues

Kabul [Afghanistan], February 6 (ANI): Two Afghan skiers, who were supposed to take part in the ongoing Winter Olympics, could not make it to the games due to the absence of passports of the athletes, a media report said on Sunday.
The Winter Games kicked off in Beijing on Friday. Participants from more than 90 countries are competing in 15 different sports. However, no athletes from Afghanistan attended the year the games due to the lack of Afghan passports, TOLOnews reported citing ski officials.
“Unfortunately, due to our passport problems, we dropped out of the competition and missed several competitions. The passport department did not issue passports to any athletes,” said Shams Kargar, the ski federation coach.
Taekwondo Federation coach Mohammad Bashir Taraki said they do not have a federation that can participate in the Winter Olympics.
“Unfortunately, Afghanistan could not participate in the Summer Olympics except for in Taekwondo. We do not have a federation that can participate in the Winter Olympics or win a place, and we, unfortunately, do not have the same facilities,” Taraki was quoted as saying by TOLOnews.
Mahmoud Haidari, a former member of the national Taekwondo team, said Afghanistan could have been represented in skiing, but the poor management of the Afghan Olympic Committee made the Afghan people just a spectator of these competitions.
Meanwhile, Afghan National Olympic Committee said their athletes could not attend the games due to some technical problems that emanated from the political change in the country.
“After the political change in the country, there were some technical problems, Bamyan is a good place for skiing, where training was supposed to take place, but there was no snow and passports were not ready for skiing athletes,” said Dad Mohammad Nawak, spokesperson for the National Olympic Committee.
The Taliban seized Kabul in August last year. A month later, they established an interim government that is yet to get recognition from the international community. (ANI)