Afghanistan is a landlocked nation, but deep in the Hindu Kush mountains there’s a fickle, barely rideable river wave. It ain’t much; but it’s their best shot at a domestic surf spot.
And back in 2018, a crew set out to surf it.
Afridun “Afri” Amu, Afghanistan’s first-ever surfer to compete in the ISA, was on that mission along with Canadian and German river surfers, Jacob Kelly Quinlan and Ben Di-Qual. For Afri, the operation had special significance, since, as a kid, his family fled to Europe where he learned to surf. For him, it was his first strike mission in his home country. But, as imagined in a war-torn and non-surfing nation, the journey came with some complications.
“We were surfing that wave and amongst all the cheering and the surrounding locals, one guy takes out a gun and points it at us,” Afri told magicseaweed. “I had no clue what and why that was happening. Luckily the locals we were with could calm down that crazy guy and eventually everything went fine. But still, in that moment, everything could have exploded.”
Since that first strike mission, a film titled Unsurfed Afghanistan documenting the trip has been slowly making its way to the big screen. And Afri’s been doing his damndest to promote surfing in Afghanistan – by training with the country’s premier female surfer Urzala Weiss, advocating for an artificial wave in his homeland, and keeping the dream alive to one day see an Afghan surfer in the Olympics.
To hear more about what he’s been up to since that groundbreaking session in the Hindu Kush mountains, magicseaweed’s Jason Lock called up Afri, who’s been holed up in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic. Check out their chat below.
Definitely, there was quite a lot that progressed. You know, I’m talking pre-COVID of course. That’s not an Afghan thing, that’s a worldwide thing. Before all the corona stuff I was training with a Urzala Weiss, a female Afghan surfer because she wants to compete in the ISA World Games.
Together with her, we were training in Indo, and we got invited by Chris Moore, Carissa’s father, to go and train on Oahu. He’s such a cool dude and really wants to help build up the Afghan surfing community. It was my first time on the North Shore. It was crazy.
So, train the kids to swim first – but where would they go surfing?
Well, the next step in this is to build an artificial wave in Afghanistan. You know better than I do, it seems to be super expensive, so, in a country like Afghanistan where you’ve got so many other problems, it would have been quite a risky thing to put that much money in it. Plus, right now there might not be the market in the country to see positive returns.
Anyway, we’ve been looking at this static wave in Austria. This is actually super easy tech to use and one of the engineers in charge of that wave was one of the guys with me, surfing that wave in Afghanistan when we went in 2018.
He said it was something we can easily implement in Afghanistan, so this is something we’re working on right now. Trying to build such a wave – we might be able to do it in the next year. Build it and it’s not actually as dangerous as it first seems.
I was in Austria with a filmer and we recorded a lot and we’re trying to get someone to fund it – we are almost there with that, we think. That’s a cool thing.
How did the training in Hawaii go?
Just before that actually, I was training with Laird Hamilton, he does that XPT training – it’s like breath work for stressful moments and surfing big waves. For moments when everything has to be on point.
Is that because you’re planning on surfing big waves?
Couple of things [laughs]. It was for training for the World Games. But yes, I’m totally into bigger waves. I don’t want to pretend I’m surfing crazy, big waves right now. But I’ve always been passionate about bigger waves – either you like it or you don’t. For me, it’s one of the craziest feelings in surfing dropping in bigger waves. That’s a thing I want to explore more. And what better person to work with than Laird.
Laird was kinda a hero when I was younger and I couldn’t turn down an opportunity to work with him. He was as superhuman as I thought he was going to be, but at the same time, amazed at how down to earth he is. Really interested in Afghan surfing.
That’s rad to meet one of your heroes…
[Laughs.] Yeah you know, in a way, I had the same thing with Kelly Slater too. Met him at the World Surfing Games. He was surfing the heat before me. But we ended up playing chess together. He was really into it and talking about endgames and fooling around.
Did you offer to play him?
I did! I think he had just recently picked it up – I gave him some tactical puzzles and showed him some endgame. He still owes me a game though. He was super competitive…but super humble and engaged with everything. [Laughs.]
That’s rad to meet one of your heroes…
[Laughs.] Yeah you know, in a way, I had the same thing with Kelly Slater too. Met him at the World Surfing Games. He was surfing the heat before me. But we ended up playing chess together. He was really into it and talking about endgames and fooling around.
Did you offer to play him?
I did! I think he had just recently picked it up – I gave him some tactical puzzles and showed him some endgame. He still owes me a game though. He was super competitive…but super humble and engaged with everything. [Laughs.]
That’s rad to meet one of your heroes…
[Laughs.] Yeah you know, in a way, I had the same thing with Kelly Slater too. Met him at the World Surfing Games. He was surfing the heat before me. But we ended up playing chess together. He was really into it and talking about endgames and fooling around.
