Afghan Boxer Steps Into the Political Ring

Abdullah Shekeib Sattari can take a blur of heavy punches and stay on his feet, which makes him a prime candidate for Afghan politics.

Kabul’s former light heavyweight champion is running as an independent in the country’s first parliamentary election since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government four years ago.

Campaigning for the Sept. 18 vote officially begins today, but Sattari has been getting death threats for weeks from people who don’t like political free agents.

“I am not afraid of anything now that I am in politics, just as I wasn’t afraid in boxing even though I broke my nose, my teeth and my fingers,” said Sattari, 28, a soft-spoken man known to his fans as Master Shekeib.

The boxer is one of 5,800 candidates from 72 political parties vying for seats on provincial councils and the lower house of parliament.

The largest party is headed by Younis Qanooni, a former minister of the interior and education, who ran a distant second to President Hamid Karzai in October’s presidential election.

Competition for votes is especially tough in Kabul, the capital, where Sattari is struggling for name recognition as one of 400 candidates on a seven-page ballot. Kabul will elect 33 of parliament’s 249-member lower house, which is called the Wolesi Jirga, or House of the People.

Under a new electoral system, Afghan voters will each cast a single ballot in constituencies that send several candidates to parliament. Ballots will be counted for individual candidates, not according to party lists, so independents such as Sattari should have a fair chance of getting elected.

To get in shape for politics, Sattari has studied the movies of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and old clips of boxing great Muhammad Ali, who briefly got in the ring with Sattari during a 2002 visit to the small, mud-walled Kabul gym where he trains.

The two fighters exchanged boxing gloves. Sattari still takes strength from Ali’s gift, and the thought that the former heavyweight champion of the world was also a political freethinker not afraid to speak his mind.

“I know a lot about Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Sattari said. “I have seen a lot of his best films and his bodybuilding matches. I’m his fan.

“I also know about Muhammad Ali’s policies and his way in politics,” he added.

One of Sattari’s main political goals is to rescue Afghanistan’s Olympic training program from what he and other athletes insist are crooked officials. The fighter had no political ambitions until an informal convention of trainers from various sports drafted him as its candidate last year.

“These other politicians do not support sport. They support their own pockets,” said Mohammed Marouf Raghbat, the national team’s chief trainer. “We need somebody to help sports in Afghanistan, and that is why we have our own candidate for parliament.”

The light heavyweight, whose campaign slogan is “defend the rights of youth and athletes,” is counting on his boxing fame to make him stand out from the pack, which is dominated by old-guard politicians whom many Afghans blame for the country’s widespread corruption and ruin.

“I don’t like dealers and those who like to line their pockets and think only about their own benefit,” Sattari said. “I will be tough and honest in my politics.”

Sattari retired from boxing last year after his appendix was removed. But he still helps train the Afghan national team.

Sattari trains with about 50 boys and young men in the Public Health Boxing Club, a dark, cramped gym.

Foreign donors, including Ali, have given money to improve training facilities for various sports, but corrupt officials have stolen most of it, Sattari said.

Sattari estimates that his campaign will cost $30,000, but so far he’s only raised $10,000, most of it by trading in his car for a clunker and spending his savings.

Political parties have offered him cash to join their ranks, but he insists on staying independent.

Last week, two black SUVs with no license plates stopped while two members of the national volleyball team were putting up Sattari’s campaign posters. Men inside the vehicles warned them not to do it again -- if they wanted to stay alive.

“I get death threats on my cellphone,” he said. “They warn me to drop out of the elections. But I have decided that I will not step back. I will always step forward.”