Mick Hartley

A powerful piece from Mike Atherton in the Times – Politicians can’t expect cricket to clear up mess they left in Afghanistan:

When 160 parliamentarians sent a letter recently asking the ECB to condemn the Taliban’s abhorrent treatment of women in Afghanistan — which the governing body have done — and to consider a boycott of the forthcoming match against Afghanistan in the Champions Trophy — which, if the government does not insist on one, is unlikely to happen — there was, predictably, no analysis therein of how the present mess came to pass.

In response, the ECB could have asked the political class to look in the mirror and reflect on the Foreign Affairs committee’s report on the American’s, the UK’s and its allies’ catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, and the abject political failure at that time, which paved the way for the rapid return of the Taliban, and the medieval policies towards women that have ensued.

The report, fittingly called “Missing in action”, is not just a sobering read, but one that should leave any right-minded person seething with anger. It is an analysis in three parts, dealing with the (lack of) planning and preparation; the chaotic withdrawal itself, and proposals for what the UK’s policy towards Afghanistan should be in future.

It is totally damning. It makes clear that, despite being forewarned more than a year in advance of America’s planned withdrawal, the UK government failed to take President Trump’s announcement in February 2020 seriously; made only limited attempts to influence, relied instead on wishful thinking that America would change its mind, and was rudderless, with key personnel on holiday, when the moment came.

Five weeks after the prime minister, in July 2021, announced that there was no military path to victory for the Taliban, they occupied Kabul. Of the three categories eligible for evacuation, there was no plan for those in the third — Afghans who had supported the UK mission, such as judges, journalists and activists, but who were not directly employed by the UK. It was only after Kabul fell, that attention turned to this highly vulnerable group.

And that's not to mention the farcical evacuation of a planeload of pets from Kabul, reportedly at the instigation of Boris Johnson, under pressure – it's widely believed – from wife Carrie.

The government’s future policy towards Afghanistan? The select committee’s recommendations were clear, reckoning that “attempts to isolate the new regime entirely may only worsen the situation for the Afghan people”. Help should be targeted to minimise the scale of the humanitarian disaster, they said, including engagement with Afghan civil society, which remains the current government’s position.

The ECB have, belatedly, condemned the Taliban’s gender apartheid. They have called for the ICC to act in a coordinated way to pressurise the Afghanistan Cricket Board to reinstate women’s cricket and to fund and support the Afghan women’s cricketers, who are in Melbourne at present, to enable them to play as an Afghan refugee team. They have asked the ICC to withhold funding from the Afghanistan Cricket Board and make membership of the ICC conditional….

Since then, though, the ICC has sat on its hands and done nothing to help the cause of Afghan women cricketers. This was a point made forcibly only on Tuesday by one of the refugee cricketers in Melbourne, Firooza Amiri, who had to burn her cricket kit before fleeing the country for a new life in Australia.

She told the BBC that they had not heard from the ICC since arriving in the country. She said they remained proud of the men’s team, but demanded equal recognition for her own. “Cricket can break boundaries, so we want to keep hopes alive — we want to play and educate,” she said. They will play an exhibition match on January 30, their first together since fleeing Afghanistan.

In the absence of a coherent, strategic international approach, cricket’s power is limited over an issue that clearly dwarfs it, and talking to those with knowledge on the ground is tricky, because it is hard to know who has links with the regime or not. To this end, I spoke this week with Najiba Sanjar, an Afghan refugee now in Sweden, whose credentials as a women’s rights activist and independent voice are impeccable.

After working for an NGO in the northeastern region of Afghanistan for 14 years, and then in Kabul, Sanjar fled her homeland with her husband and five sons on September 18, 2021, following the Taliban’s return. Today, she works in an educational centre for the Swedish government, and looks on in despair. A sporting boycott, she thinks, would be symbolic, but would have little practical impact on the Taliban….

Lest we forget, there is no doubt where responsibility lies for what the Foreign Affairs committee’s report called “a tragedy for Afghanistan, marking the biggest reversal in the rights of women and girls in a generation”. Levers over the Taliban disappeared with our departure from the country and it remains a puzzle why some politicians think England’s cricketers can clear up the gigantic mess we left behind.

To be fair: which the Americans left behind, with the UK bumbling along behind. No one comes out of this looking good.