FIFA 2026 is exposing how politics is building borders where sports should be building bridges. Sarajevo 1984 proved otherwise, and we are choosing to forget.
When Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia, hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984, the world was deeply divided. The Cold War had frozen diplomacy, nuclear tensions were high, and ideological rivalry shaped almost every aspect of international politics. Only four years earlier, the Moscow Olympics had been boycotted by much of the Western bloc following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Four years later, the Soviet Union and its allies would retaliate by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics. Sport had become another battlefield of geopolitics.
The Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union are long behind us, and we’re now hurtling toward a tri-polar world dominated by America, Russia, and China. These three powers vy to shape global influence, often competing but sometimes colluding. As the saying goes, “When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.” So, the central question for this lecture is: What path are the nations of South Asia—including Afghanistan and Iran—likely to take? What alternatives and tools do they possess to navigate this landscape? Most importantly, what vision of society and power should guide them toward a viable future?
Speaker :
Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy is a nuclear physicist, author, and a prominent activist who is particularly concerned with promotion of freedom of speech, secularism, scientific temper and education. He is the founder-director of The Black Hole in Islamabad and as the head of Mashal Books in Lahore, he leads a major translation effort to produce books in Urdu that promote modern thought, human rights, and emancipation of women.
Prof Hoodbhoy received his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from MIT and has taught physics and mathematics at Forman Christian College-University in Lahore, at the Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) in Islamabad and later at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
He is a recipient of the Baker Award for Electronics and the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics. He was visiting professor at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Maryland. In 2003 he was awarded UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science.
Here is a list of a few of his publications :
– Pakistan: Origins, Identity and Future, published by Routledge (London, New York), 2023. – Confronting the Bomb – Pakistani and Indian Scientists Speak Out, (edited) Oxford University Press, 2013. – Education and the State – Fifty Years of Pakistan, (edited) Oxford University Press, 1998. – Islam & Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, published by ZED Books, London, in 1991 with translations in Turkish, Malaysian, Indonesian, Arabic, Spanish, Sindhi, and Urdu. – Proceedings of School on Fundamental Physics and Cosmology, co-edited with A. Ali, World Scientific, Singapore, 1991.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 