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In a basement webcafé in Kabul, Kazem
Rahimi directs a scurrying armed figure
around his screen. Scouring his sunlit online
world, he hunts for rivals to shoot,
while chatting to fellow players on a headset.
Just a few miles outside the city, genuine
fighting of a similar sort is an everyday
occurrence, as Taliban guerrillas battle the
Afghan security forces. In Kabul itself,
bombs and assassinations are common.
Yet for Mr Rahimi, the game is a form of escapism.
He enjoys the teamwork and it improves
his English, he explains. Moreover,
he is jobless, so has little else to do.
The game Mr Rahimi is playing, “Player-
Unknown’s Battlegrounds”, has been a global
hit. It is mostly used as a smartphone
app, not in dim underground gaming dens
but in bedrooms and living rooms. It
racked up worldwide sales of around $2bn
in the first nine months of 2020.
But in Afghanistan the popularity of the
game, known as pubg (pronounced
Pub-g), has caused a moral panic. Mobilephone
operators estimate that around
100,000 Afghans play it at once at peak
times. Many also do so in the wee hours,
when the internet is fastest. The game is
thought to take up a huge chunk of national
mobile-data traffic. The closure of schools
and universities because of covid-19 seems
to have supercharged its popularity.
Critics worry that it is further desensitising
a generation already exposed to constant
violence and is keeping young students from their studies. Freshta Karim, an
educationist who runs a mobile library,
says she cut the internet in her home to
stop her nephews playing. “It looked so
real, and for us, it looks more real because
the war is going on,” she says.
The Ministry of Haj and Religious Affairs
has piled in, declaring the game harmful
to mental health and warning that it
could create a violent mindset. On December
17th the telecoms regulator said it was
banning the game, though it gave little indication
of how it would enforce a ban or
what the penalties for breaching one would
be. It says it is discussing with telecoms
firms how to put the ban into effect.
Mohammad Reza, a regular player sitting
next to Mr Rahimi, is dismissive of the
ban. “Is pubg the real problem with Afghanistan?”
he says, rolling his eyes. The
country, he and his friends say, has far
more serious troubles, and young people in
particular face grave difficulties. Kabul has
precious few parks or recreational facilities,
and the risk of violence on the streets
makes parents reluctant to let their children
go out. While the intractability of the
40-year civil war makes the future lookgrim
enough, the un estimates that four in
ten young Afghans are neither working nor
studying. A dispiriting number think their
only hope of a better life is to flee to Europe.
Zakria Ayubi, who runs a gaming den in
Kabul, says pubg offers a welcome distraction.
One of his friends, an unemployed
law graduate, plays through the night and
sleeps all day. “He says, ‘I have looked for
jobs and there’s nothing. What more can I
do?’” The ban infuriates Mr Ayubi. “What
has the government done for us? They try
to ban pubg, but can you see any services
from the government for young people?”
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