In Afghanistan, women are being erased by design. They have been cast out of schools, out of universities, medical colleges, public places of work, and sports fields.
That the Taliban, which took Kabul in August 2021, is as brutally repressive a government as exists at present is well known. And yet so many edicts issued by the Taliban's "Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry" feel like fresh calamities for the rights and well-being of resident Afghan women. Laws active since the middle of last year prescribe that "whenever an adult woman leaves her home out of necessity, she is obliged to conceal her voice, face, and body". When education is denied, when women cannot be visible in public, when so much as raising your voice outdoors is unlawful, do even stray animals have greater agency?
It is against this horrifying political backdrop that cricket is about to host another major tournament in which the Afghanistan men's team will compete. This is awkward for a sport that purports to enshrine gender equality, but which does not wish to abandon one of its shiniest 21st century success stories. On the one hand, the ICC has its stated goal of growing the women's game. On the other, Afghanistan's men are almost certainly the greatest ever cricket side from a nation not formerly colonised by the British. One of the great critiques of cricket is that it is inaccessible for people who were not introduced to it early. Here was evidence of it exploding into popularity in a place that had been largely oblivious to it as recently as two generations ago.
It follows that the status quo is beset by pretense. Before each match at an ICC event, Afghanistan's male players line up before the tricolour flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which was overthrown in 2021, and show respect to a now-defunct national anthem while at home music is banned in public, and instruments are burned for causing "moral corruption".
Meanwhile, the latest from the ICC is that it remains "committed to leveraging [its] influence constructively to support the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB), in fostering cricket development and ensuring playing opportunities for both men and women in Afghanistan", according to a Reuters report. In truth, there currently exists no realistic pathway to setting down the most rudimentary cricket programme for women. Even in the days of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (under the Taliban it is called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) such programmes were shackled, largely by custom and culture. Any advances made back then have since been emphatically reversed. What is the liberty to play sport when set against foundational rights such as the right to freedom of speech, the right to movement, and the right to education? What real "influence" does the ICC believe it can wield upon a totalitarian state?
Knitted into the ICC's contradictions on this issue is the further pretense that it is an apolitical organisation - one that does not even allow international cricketers to wear emblems showing solidarity with peoples whom those players believe to be oppressed. Usman Khawaja and Moeen Ali have found this out in the past 12 years, over their support of Palestinians. In reality, pursuing a professional career in cricket as a woman is an intensely political act in too much of the cricketing world, far beyond Afghanistan. Parents, teachers, clerics, community leaders, and often politicians themselves, frequently impose restrictions on girls taking to sport.
But so bleak is Afghanistan's rights situation, it is also possible to sympathise with the unprincipled pragmatism of the ICC. What is their alternative? Does the ICC ban the Afghanistan men's side, who have proved that on purely cricketing terms they deserve their place in the highest reaches of limited-overs cricket? If Afghanistan's men were not so good, the ICC would have greater opportunity to quietly sequester them away. But the likes of Rashid Khan keep piling up top-quality wickets, and the likes of Rahmanullah Gurbaz keep crashing scintillating runs. Their contributions and those of others have helped transform the team into an increasingly consistent side.
These two, plus Mohammad Nabi, have also publicly spoken out against the Taliban's moves to deny Afghan women education, particularly in the field of maternal medicine (one of the Taliban's 2024 edicts was to ban women from studying even midwifery). "The Quran highlights the importance of learning and acknowledges the equal spiritual worth of both genders," Rashid wrote on social media in December. But it has also been noted that many of Afghanistan's top male cricketers only occasionally stray into the realm of politics, and live largely comfortable lives outside the country, along with much of their immediate families.
Calls to ban the men's team outright since the Taliban takeover in 2021 are unsurprising. Sanctions have long been an instrument of the Western global order, and there have been instances in which forced isolation has mounted meaningful pressure on repressive governments - apartheid South Africa being the most obvious study.
Some Afghan women have spoken out in favour of a blanket ban. "They are the Taliban team for me, not the Afghan team," said Marzieh Hamidi, the taekwondo champion who was Afghanistan's flagbearer at the Tokyo Olympics, and who currently resides in France. Zahra Joya, a UK-based Afghan journalist wrote for the Guardian this month that "Afghanistan's cricket team is doing a great job at sportswashing the Taliban's dark record, especially when you consider that they are representing a country where women are denied access to not just cricket but any kind of sport." That these are merely the views of Afghan women embedded in western nations is the laziest accusation to throw - we know desperately little about how resident Afghan women feel precisely because they are forbidden to speak. It is possible domiciled Afghans also resent their male cricketers presenting a sanitised vision of their nation to the world, when women there cannot legally set foot outside their homes without an accompanying man.
Cricket Australia has, essentially, embraced a version of sanctions. Their men's team will not play bilateral cricket against Afghanistan, which has caused consternation within the ACB and among Afghanistan's male national cricketers. But even here, there are contradictions. Australia have been playing Afghanistan in global tournaments, and will do so again in the Champions Trophy, on February 28 in Lahore. If their boycott is founded on principle, that principle does not extend to situations in which tournament points are on the line.
It is also true that Australia has done more than most for Afghan's women cricketers, whatever the complicity of their government and allies such as the US and UK in creating the conditions that allowed the Taliban takeover. The story of the manic rescue of these women and many of their family members as the Republic collapsed, was told by Mel Jones and others to Firdose Moonda and Valkerie Baynes on the Powerplay podcast on ESPNcricinfo. Since these Afghan women's settling in Australia, CA has funded an Afghanistan Women's XI - basically a team in exile - who on January 30 played a Cricket Without Borders team, as a potential first step towards more cricket. These are symbolic fixtures, largely aimed at drawing attention to the desperate plight of Afghan women, and these women deserve every cent of investment and attention they receive. But does this awareness campaign - and that is essentially what it is - work anywhere near as well in a world in which Afghanistan's men are also not allowed to play? If all Afghanistan teams were banned from global competition, what likelihood that the nation slips even further from the international consciousness?
And how would an all-out ban work to improve the choices available to Afghan women? Early this year, more than 160 British MPs signed a letter that urged the England men's team to boycott their Champions Trophy match against Afghanistan on February 26. But what political mechanism would such a move hope to trigger? This brand of blunt-force sanction hopes primarily to disgruntle the people of the country in question, who would then need to exert pressure on their government.
But the regime in Afghanistan is not even a nominal democracy. It has no aspirations to be one. South Africa's apartheid government, by comparison, put far greater stock in partaking in a "respected" global order. South Africa's had been a white administration that craved acceptance in the West, and people of colour within South Africa had essentially leveraged this craving to win rights and self-determination for themselves, with the assistance of foreign allies. Organisations like the South African Council on Sports (SACOS), that were headed by oppressed peoples, were instrumental in that fight, and informed the wider campaign for justice.
Afghanistan's situation is quite different. Could the banning of the men's team ever seriously prompt the Taliban to rethink its policies towards women? This regime runs a viciously patriarchal fundamentalist theocracy. There is no significant feedback loop between public displeasure and transformation of policy. For the most extremist wings of the Taliban, which are especially influential at present, cricket is an enterprise in which Afghan men with contoured beards or clean-shaven faces, engage in sport publicly and celebrate victories by dancing or singing along to music, those images consumed by an Afghan public watching television or via the internet (the internet is censored but available in many parts of the country). For the worst extremists, cricket is the gnat on the rump of a fundamentalist political project, which could - and perhaps should - be swatted away. The fallout may not be painless. But it is unlikely to lead to significant challenge to their power.
In fact, for the most conservative Taliban forces, further isolation may be interpreted as greater evidence of their own exceptionalism. For many regular Afghans, meanwhile, the exploits of the men's cricket team offer a singular glimpse into a regular life as understood by the majority of the planet's free peoples. In South Africa, the political consensus appears to be that a ban on the Afghan men's side may, in fact, worsen life for Afghan women.
While it may seem reasonable to place greater pressure on the prominent Afghan male cricketers to speak on behalf of women's rights, it should also be clocked that between 21st century wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and domestic situations in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, there are allegations of human rights violations against various governments that have not required the input of male cricketers elsewhere.
If we are to measure their actions against those of their male peers, it is important to see the Afghan men's cricketers' victimhood here too. Their popularity and wealth will buy them some influence, but less than it would in most countries. Though they are on billboards and in advertisements in Afghanistan, they have no meaningful rights as citizens, nor access to a judicial or political framework through which they may respond, or seek redress, even for themselves. Many Sri Lankan cricketers, for example, supported the mass protests that evicted the Rajapaksa family. Afghanistan's cricketers must weigh any challenges to the Taliban's power against the threat of family - or extended family - being potentially hounded down.
To suggest that the ICC suddenly grows a conscience on this issue is fanciful. The ICC is little more than a large events-management company at present, as noted by others. It is only barely keeping a grip on its position as the sport's pinnacle body, while major economic winds continue to transform the game. It has long been primarily a profit-seeking entity. It is not a body upon which morality much acts.
And though the ICC has a monopoly on global cricket administration, it is important that the game realises the ICC is not cricket's only force. There is all manner of media, many flavours of fans, many means of fighting back. Asymmetric warfare can often be effective against deeply embedded power structures. As long-term rights activists will attest, the trick is to stay in that fight.
Blanket sanctions may be counterproductive, but what cricket cannot not allow, is the forgetting. Afghanistan have carved joyous arcs through the last two World Cups, prompting mass celebrations at home. But look through those images, and there is not a woman in sight. For every Afghan boy that picks up a cricket ball and dreams those glorious childhood dreams of emulating sporting heroes on the biggest stage, there are little girls who want the same for themselves, but will struggle to ever see the inside of a classroom.