Afghan women demand cricket’s governing body takes stand against Taliban
Cricket’s governing body is under fire from Afghan women after being banned from playing by the Taliban, while men have continued competing.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has been accused of making “unfair decisions” following the deterioration of women’s rights under Afghanistan’s hardline rulers.
Now political pressure has been growing, including from more than 160 MPs and peers, for the England men’s cricket team to boycott their upcoming Champions Trophy match against Afghanistan next month.
A total of 25 female players, who were selected to train in 2020 with the plan that they would eventually represent Afghanistan before the Taliban took over in 2021, are living in exile in Australia.
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Why people want cricket match boycotted
Firooza Amiri is one of those players now based in Melbourne.
While she escaped with her parents and siblings to a new life, her extended family remain at home and she believes now more than ever a female cricket team representing Afghanistan would give women of the country some hope.
“It is heartbreaking for me. I have all my freedoms, they can’t have their basic rights. I have an aunt who dreamed of being a teacher her whole life and she got a contract with a school in 2020 and in 2021 the Taliban took power. After they took over, she got a very deep depression and every time I talk to her she is always crying.
“Girls are growing up without education, they are forced to get married at 14. These things are heartbreaking for me. Women are living in a very horrible situation. Afghanistan went back to a very past time. All the countries are improving and celebrating equality but in Afghanistan there is not something like equality.”
When the players fled they had yet to play an international match.
Women’s cricket in the country was just beginning, now it has been snuffed out completely, even though the ICC rules state that women’s cricket must be supported by member nations.
Amiri says the ICC must ‘turn their face to the women of Afghanistan’
Amiri doesn’t think that a boycott of a match or a complete boycott of the Afghanistan men’s team is the way forward, but is in no doubt the ICC has not gone into bat for the Afghan women’s team.
“At the end of the day all of the decisions come from the ICC and it’s been unfair decisions from the ICC for us. We sent a letter to the ICC, they never respond to us. They make excuses, they always say having a women’s Afghanistan team is complicated. It is not complicated, it’s as simple as ‘we want to have a team’ – it’s very easy.
“The ICC must stop making unfair decisions and turn their face to the women of Afghanistan. We are here, we just dream to play cricket for our country.”
Read more from Sky News:
England cricket chiefs reject boycott
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As far as the ICC is concerned the matter isn’t closed, but it’s hard to see how it can be resolved in the near future.
An ICC spokesperson statement said: “The ICC remains closely engaged with the situation in Afghanistan and continues to collaborate with our members. We are committed to leveraging our influence constructively to support the ACB [Afghanistan Cricket Board] in fostering cricket development and ensuring playing opportunities for both men and women in Afghanistan.
“The ICC has established the Afghanistan Cricket Task Force, chaired by deputy chairman Mr Imran Khwaja, who will lead the ongoing dialogue on this matter.”
We asked to speak to Mr Khwaja to get an update and the ICC are looking into that.
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‘Governing bodies of sport have failed’
The response from Amiri though is openly critical. “The ICC as an international council has never reached out to us. We are national players. They’ve never been to help. I think in general the ICC only focus on the men’s team… it doesn’t matter which country. The ICC is always talking about equality but there is no equality that the ICC should celebrate.”
But she does not want the Afghanistan men’s team, who are ranked 8th in the world for One Day Internationals, to be banned.
“They tried so hard to get where they are today,” she said, adding that they also “had the support of the ICC” to achieve that.
The ruling Taliban have banned women from sports. File pic: AP
The Afghanistan female players would like to play as a refugee team, but even this has been refused for now.
Amiri said: “We just want to represent Afghanistan as long as we are on the ground, on the field. Every time we play we are not just playing for ourselves but millions of girls who are still in Afghanistan.
“We just want to make sure Afghanistan women do not feel forgotten.”
World
Thai prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra sacked for ethics violation after leaked phone call
Thailand’s prime minister has been sacked after a leaked phone call with a senior Cambodian politician caused outrage.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who was Thailand’s youngest PM, has been dismissed from office by the country’s Constitutional Court after only a year in power.
The court found Ms Shinawatra, 39, violated ethics in a leaked June telephone call, during which she appeared to kowtow to Cambodia’s former leader Hun Sen as the bordering countries were on the verge of an armed conflict.
She also criticised a Thai army commander – a taboo move in a country where the military is extremely influential.
Fighting erupted weeks later and lasted five days. At least 35 people were killed and more than 260,000 were displaced.
Ms Shinawatra, who was new to politics when she took office in August last year, apologised over the call and said she was trying to avert a war. She was suspended in July.
Ms Shinawatra arriving at Government House in Bangkok ahead of the verdict on Friday. Pic: Reuters
She is now the fifth Thai PM from, or backed by, the billionaire Shinawatra family to be removed by the military or the judiciary in 17 years, amid a battle for power between the country’s warring elites.
The ruling thrusts Thailand into more political uncertainty at a time of public unease over stalled reforms and a stuttering economy.
Speaking after the court’s decision, the exiting PM said “all sides” in Thai politics now “have to work together to build political stability and to ensure that there won’t be another turning point again”.
The focus will now shift to who will replace Ms Shinawatra.
Her influential, billionaire father, Thaksin Shinawatra, who also once served as Thailand’s PM, is expected to be at the heart of a flurry of bargaining to keep the ruling Pheu Thai party in power.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more:
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The leader of the main opposition People’s Party has called for the next prime minister to dissolve parliament once they are installed.
The deputy PM, Phumtham Wechayachai, and the current cabinet will act as government caretakers until a new leader is elected by parliament. There is no time limit on when that must take place.
After all those raised hopes of peace, Ukraine has been hit by the second-worst night of Russian air attacks since the war began.
So much for diplomacy, despite the Alaska summit, then the Washington DC meeting.
The Kremlin says it was aiming at military targets, but yet again, the pictures tell a very different story.
Follow latest: UK summons Putin’s ambassador
Firefighters work at the site of a burning building after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
One civilian building after another was hit, more than a dozen people were killed, and British Council and EU buildings were also damaged.
So what’s going on? Why is Vladimir Putin doing it?
Because he can.
The Russian president thinks he’s winning this war, and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that he’s using diplomacy to play for time while he carries on beating down the Ukrainians’ will to win.
And at the moment, no one is stopping him
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At least 14 killed in Kyiv attack
Ukraine is hitting back, particularly at Russia‘s oil installations, more of them going up in thick black smoke, after being hit by long-range Ukrainian drones.
It is taking a heavy toll on Putin’s ‘Achilles heel’, but on its own, analysts don’t expect it will be enough to persuade him to end this war.
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British Council building hit in Kyiv
The West can wring its hands in condemnation.
But it’s divided between Europe that wants a ceasefire and much more severe sanctions, and Donald Trump, who, it seems, does not – strangely always willing to sympathise with the Russians more than Ukraine.
He’s back to blaming Ukraine for starting the war, saying earlier in the week that Kyiv should not have got into a war it had no chance of winning.
It is a grotesque perversion of history. Ukraine, of course, had no choice but to fight to defend itself when it was invaded in an act of unprovoked aggression.
Every time the US president has condemned Russia for these kinds of attacks, he has never followed through and done nothing to punish them.
Rescue workers carry an injured woman after a Russian strike on Kyiv, Ukraine. Pic: AP
More worryingly for the Ukrainians, the Russians are getting the upper hand in the drones war, taking Iranian technology and souping it up into faster-moving drones that the Ukrainians are having increasing difficulty bringing down.
They expect as many as a thousand drones a night coming their way by the winter, and many, many more innocents to die.
Next week, Putin will join Chinese and North Korean leaders in a summit in Beijing, both supporting his war in Ukraine.
(L-R) Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un. Pics: Reuters
Read more from Dominic Waghorn:
Ukrainians warn they’re in danger of losing drone arms race
We are further away from peace now than we were two weeks ago
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
A war that began as one man’s mad idea has, in three and a half years, metastasised into a titanic struggle between east and west, fought increasingly with machines in a dystopian evolution of war.
If Mr Trump is not prepared to use his power to bring this war to an end, what will another three and a half years of his presidency bring?
It is a chilling question.
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