Thomas Law
Afghanistan’s national cricket team took the world by surprise with four victories at the 2023 World Cup, including against reigning champions England and neighbouring Pakistan, as well as the Netherlands and Sri Lanka. At first glance, it was the classic sporting fairytale story: the underdog fighting against the odds, overcoming adversity and the doubts of others to showcase their talents and demonstrate their belonging at the top tier.
But despite some of the more positive commentary about providing hope to the people of Afghanistan, the team’s victory was overshadowed by socio-political tensions in a country ruled by the Taliban. The national team has had a complicated but not actively hostile relationship with the regime in Kabul. This makes it difficult to split sports from politics and raises the ominous prospect of the team’s success boosting the Taliban’s international image by association. In this light, how the world chooses to interact with Afghanistan on a cricketing basis may provide a glimpse of future diplomacy. Indeed, there are lessons and possible precedents in cricketing ties as to how broader international relations might unfold, and vice versa.
The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) and all team members bar two live inside the country. Many lined up, on multiple occasions, for photographs with the Taliban and received congratulatory overtures from them. So, whilst the national team plays under the flag of the Republic government, to a national anthem of a bygone era, its success may confer greater international legitimacy on the Taliban by association.
In this light, how the world chooses to interact with Afghanistan on a cricketing basis may provide a glimpse of future diplomacy.
Sport can be an escapist form of entertainment and attachment, a chance for people to momentarily forget their issues and conflicts. But it also has the power to change the perceptions of individuals, groups, leaders and indeed entire countries. The sad fact is that the most successful period of Afghan cricket has come during this era of repressive Taliban rule. This joy is thus sullied by association with a despotic regime, whilst also providing the country (and by de facto its leadership) with some form of international reputation and notoriety that cannot simply be wished away by a naïve desire to keep politics and sports separate, expressed by players and fans with the hashtag #stoppoliticsincricket.
Cricket was mostly unknown to Afghanistan until the late twentieth century. Having triumphed in three Anglo-Afghan wars in the nineteenth century, it was not exposed to the most British of games, cricket. Such a legacy certainly rubbed off in India, and what would go on to become Pakistan. When refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion fled across the Durand Line, many, particularly Pashtuns, would embrace the game with fervour, and take it back to Afghanistan.
Throughout the years of Taliban rule and the subsequent NATO intervention, cricket grew in popularity, as did the quality of Afghanistan’s players. This meteoric rise has been marked by a first World Cup appearance and victory in 2015, gaining elite ‘Test’ status in 2017, spin bowler Rashid Khan recognized statistically as the world’s best, up to the recent World Cup successes.
However, this is not a story akin to South Africa’s Rugby World Cup triumphs, featuring participants from multiple ethnic groups uniting to compete as a beacon of hope for a brighter future. For one thing, South Africa in 1995 was coming out of decades of Apartheid segregationist rule and embracing democracy – Afghanistan since 2021 has lost the institutions of the previous Republic and is now under the rule of a theocratic ethno-nationalist regime.
Whereas rugby was the preserve of the white, Afrikaner minority, cricket is dominated by Pashtuns. And where Nelson Mandela deliberately used rugby to appeal to suspicious whites and bring together people from across the ‘rainbow nation’, the ethno-nationalist Taliban have made no such attempts to do so.
The team has always been primarily Pashtun – not due to any specific government or governing body policy per se, but rather the circumstantial fact of popularity amongst Pashtuns and other ethnicities’ preference for sports like martial arts and football. This divergence cannot be explained only by the genesis of the game in refugee camps in Pakistan; the country was the largest refugee hub for all ethnicities.
However, this is not a story akin to South Africa’s Rugby World Cup triumphs, featuring participants from multiple ethnic groups uniting to compete as a beacon of hope for a brighter future.
Shared socio-ethnic similarities and a degree of kinship may have been a factor when adopting new pastimes. Pashtuns, with their history of cross-border ties to Pakistan, could to some extent see themselves in the sporting cultures and successes of not just Pakistani Pashtuns, but indeed come to feel at home in the South Asian sporting and cultural landscape through linguistic and racial ties.
The Hazaras and other ethnicities, even in Pakistan, may have identified more closely with other sports from nations that they felt closer cultural ties to. The most prominent example of this is Afghanistan’s only Olympic medallist, Rohullah Nikpa. He fled to Iran during the civil war as a child, grew up watching Bruce Lee and martial arts movies, as an ethnic Hazara, was inspired to take up the East Asian sport of taekwondo. The Taliban’s ethnic nationalism poses a challenge to how to view the impact of the national side’s victories. However, this ethnic component did not begin with the Taliban.
When the team began to improve on the global stage and stars like Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman rose to prominence, politicians, in particular ethnic nationalists, started to take a greater interest in the sport. The national side became intertwined with nationalist narratives of Pashtun ethnic pride, whilst governments subsequently minimised attention and resources afforded to other sports played primarily by other ethnicities.
This deliberate politicisation of sport has only intensified under the Taliban. Whilst Deputy Prime Minister, Abdul Kabir, was quick to congratulate and embrace the side’s victory over Pakistan, other athletes fear reprisals. Abbas Alizada, another Hazara martial arts personality dubbed “Afghanistan’s Bruce Lee”, was one of the 32 athletes sponsored and evacuated to the UK by a British NGO. In contrast to the lavish praise for the country’s cricketers, Alizada has described the threat of persecution he faced living in Afghanistan under the Taliban, going so far as to cover his face when walking the streets.
The Taliban’s secure grip on power domestically poses a difficult balancing act for the team to manage. There’s an understandable desire to view the team apolitically, a need for any degree of hope, distraction, and happiness. But there are concerns that in attempting to be all things to all people, the national team is becoming too cozy with the Taliban, that a somewhat understandable urge to retain good relations with the governing authority has swung too far to embracing and endorsing.
The Taliban’s secure grip on power domestically poses a difficult balancing act for the team to manage.
A business as usual approach, whereby players act around the Taliban as if they were any other government figures, gives the impression of ignoring the persecution of women and other ethnic groups. The players’ public and close appearances alongside Taliban officials has been interpreted as being somewhat tone deaf, as well as reinforcing certain nationalist narratives.
The Taliban’s intensification of sporting and otherwise marginalization against non-Pashtun communities can be seen as a continuation of its ethnonationalist ideology. Similarly, its ban on and hostility to women’s sports is another extension of its worldview. It may seem trivial to list a ban on sporting activity alongside the prohibition of education beyond sixth grade, summary repression, and effective subjugation. But it can be seen as a microcosm of not only the Taliban’s policies, but also that of society, and how such policies are viewed by the outside world.
A condition of Test status is the establishment of a women’s national team. Even back in 2017, that requirement was temporarily waived with the view to establishing a team in 2020 – previous attempts at starting such a team were abandoned in 2014 after a conservative backlash and threats from the Taliban. In 2020, 25 central contracts were finally awarded.
With the arrival of the Taliban regime, such hopes were dashed. And yet Afghanistan continues to retain Test status, despite no sign of a reversal in policy. The majority of the 25 fled to Australia and have struggled to gain clarity as to whether they can form a team in exile and what the status of Afghanistan’s men’s national team will be going forward. The first difficult situation arose when Australia withdrew from a 2021 test match after the Taliban announced further restrictions on women.
In January 2023 Australia again cancelled matches after another series of clampdowns on women’s rights – this time the freedom to access parks, gyms, employment opportunities and education. That prompted indignation from the ACB, claiming that Australia was “prioritising political interests over the principles of fair play and sportsmanship”, called it “unfair and unexpected”, and lambasted Cricket Australia’s “pathetic statement”.
The ACB could have issued a mild statement of disappointment but understanding or even stayed silent. Instead, it criticized Australia in strong terms, appealing to the notion of ‘fair play’ to back this up, whilst going on the offensive by labelling the Australians ‘pathetic’. There was an implication that the Board did not value women’s rights and their ability to play sports, or at least did not feel it warranted cancellation. Rashid Khan said he was “really disappointed” with the decision and threatened to boycott the country’s Big Bash League. His compatriot Naveen ul-Haq actually did so after criticizing the Australians’ “childish decisions”.
These cases show Afghan cricket on the whole appearing closer and closer to the Taliban in words and actions. For many of the 25 women who received those central contracts, however, the majority of whom found sanctuary in Australia, it was a welcome call. One such player, Firooza Amiri, told AP that she and several of her teammates wrote to the world governing body seeking clarification on funding; no reply came. The ICC has said that it does not want to penalize Afghan cricket “for abiding by the laws set by the government of their own country.”
In 1975, at the first iteration of the Cricket World Cup, there was one notable absentee – South Africa, five years previously excluded from the ICC over its apartheid policy. In 2023, Afghanistan’s ‘gender apartheid’ does not seem to be enough to merit further sanction from the game’s governing body. Even Amiri has not called for an outright ban on the men’s team, even though they “refused to stand with us”.
As China became the first country to send a new ambassador to Afghanistan since the Taliban’s takeover, and more and more countries increasing their dealings with the country, the unanimous isolation following the fall of Kabul may be beginning to fray. The establishment of diplomatic relations will not follow on from cricketing success, but it is undeniable that as Afghanistan gains more international success and notoriety, its predicament cannot be ignored and clamour for clarification will grow. Cricket may show a murky way forward in which international relations may develop.
As Afghanistan gains more international success and notoriety, its predicament cannot be ignored and clamour for clarification will grow.
The ICC seems in no rush to decide as to how to deal with Afghanistan – for its failure to support women’s cricket, and in how to deal with a team championed by one of the most repressive regimes on earth. With Afghanistan having qualified for the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy by their strong World Cup performance, these issues will not dissipate. The fact that the UN Special Representative called for more “direct engagement” with the Taliban, whilst maintaining the call to return to “international norms” as a “non-negotiable” highlights the struggle to balance competing interests at the highest international bodies– let alone sporting authorities and athletes themselves.
If this team is meant to be national, then what exactly does this recent success represent? In any case, the players themselves, athletes first and foremost and not primarily political agents, have to act carefully. With the vast majority living in Afghanistan, they cannot upset the ruling Taliban regime (that accepts them playing under the Republic flag and anthem) for fear of limitations on their playing freedoms, or indeed personal ramifications. But then there’s also the need to maintain international respectability.
The world seems in no rush to formulate a meaningfully consistent policy and approach to a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and in the absence of any certainty, the use of sport (in this case cricket) as a political tool has the potential to drive the initiative. The team has ties with the Taliban, and the ACB has been seen to have sided with the Taliban on issues like women’s rights. With the country gaining notoriety and international recognition in a sport linked to and championed by the Taliban, there will be questions about whether the team is legitimizing the government in Kabul. They will last as long as sporting success and diplomatic limbo continue.
Thomas Law is an MA candidate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
