KABUL, Afghanistan -- He looks out from his office window onto the cracked, empty stadium below, and he points to the goal. "There," says the head of Afghanistan's Olympic committee, "is where they hanged people."

Now, in the new Afghanistan, where peace is a political mantra and most ills are blamed on the last guys who ran the place, the soccer field in Kabul Sports Stadium is used for something different. These days, they use it to play soccer.

In a land buffeted by 23 years of war, sports was hardly a priority. But this week, as Afghanistan plans to send its first delegation in three years to an international Olympic meeting, the athletes of an isolated country have a reason, however small, to hope.

"We are an independent country again, and we are ready to compete," the Olympic chief, Anwar Jekdalek, said Saturday. "All the world recognizes Afghanistan again."

It's not quite that easy. The International Olympic Committee still hasn't reinstated Afghanistan, which it barred in 1999 in part because the harsh Islamic rule of the Taliban militia prevented women from competing.

But sending official representatives to an official meeting -- this one in Malaysia, where the national Olympic committees of various nations are convening -- is, officials here say, a good step.

Afghanistan faces formidable obstacles in most every arena, and sports is no exception. Athletes lack money, even adequate food; teams, clubs and the Olympic committee are all asking the interim government for financial help.

Communication between provinces is spotty, creating a tantalizing conundrum for any coach trying to cobble together a squad: Who knows what future stars are out there, kicking a makeshift soccer ball around in some field of deepest Helmand province?

Scorned but not banned under the Taliban (except for women's sports), today sports are everywhere. Taxi drivers favor soccer-ball stickers for rear windshields. On Saturday, a blazing afternoon, impromptu soccer and volleyball games abounded on fields and side streets.

"I have never played outside this country. Of course I want to," said Elyas Ahmad Monoshehr, a 29-year-old man from Kabul and a forward on the national soccer team. He wears Nikes and a shirt with a saying stitched on the breast pocket: "Keep cool when things hot up."

"Our athletes need to see how others are competing. They need competition that will make them better," he said.

	“	When people don't feel secure, they don't play well. If we can participate in the Olympics again, it will help our athletes be more famous and get us back into things. ”
		— Hamid Popolzai, who runs a sporting goods store in Afghanistan

Afghanistan last sent athletes to an Olympics in 1996, when three dozen traveled to Atlanta two years after the Taliban took power. By 1999, the IOC had banned the country from competition, and U.N. sanctions shortly thereafter sealed the deal.

But it was only the latest blow.

"Ever since the Communists fell, we've fallen behind in sports," said Hamid Popolzai, who runs Asia Sporting Goods in Kabul's Sharenow neighborhood. On its front door is a team picture of the Manchester United soccer team; inside, soccer balls go for 150,000 Afghanis (about $4.50).

"I understand why: When people don't feel secure, they don't play well," he said. "If we can participate in the Olympics again, it will help our athletes be more famous and get us back into things."

Jekdalek was president of the country's Olympic committee before the Taliban under President Burhanuddin Rabbani, in an era when factional fighting made living in Kabul a risky endeavor. A wrestler, he spent the Taliban years in London.

These days, he sits inside the Kabul Sports Stadium, which is decorated with ramshackle Olympic rings, and drums up international support. He traveled to Italy last week and returned, he says, with promises of support from its Olympic committee as well as Spain's and Ireland's.

Like many appointees of the new government, he recites the standard narrative of post-Taliban Afghanistan: inclusiveness.

"Anybody should be able to participate -- any tribe, any ethnic group, men, women," he said.

Sports federations are coming together again, putting together teams -- including women's volleyball, basketball and taekwondo, rusty after years of neglect. The country has rejoined 20 federations, Jekdalek says, and money is being solicited for regional tournaments to ferret out good athletes from the provinces.

He has made a promise to the IOC: If Afghanistan participates in Athens in 2004, a woman will carry the national flag into the stadium at the opening ceremony. At the head of the delegation, he predicts, will be wrestling and boxing -- Afghanistan's strongest teams.

And one more sport, he predicts, smiling a sad smile: shooting.

"Our people know shooting," he says. "They've been shooting for 23 years."