Being visible, being seen, making an impact

(Dave Sihra - Substack)

Isobel Joyce reflects on the flashpoint of working during the recent controversial Afghanistan series with the human rights abuses faced by women in the country, but what next for this issue.

“It’s fair to say I was thinking about it non-stop in the weeks leading up to the series” recalls Joyce. But if anything, much of the conversation and thinking around it hasn’t stopped.

The series finished with a 4-0 win for the visitors but the issue of Ireland choosing to play Afghanistan largely hasn’t disappeared especially with more matches against the side coming up. But what happens next for this ongoing issue in world cricket?

In his recent piece for the Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole described how members of the Afghan Women’s cricket team who fled to Australia say they have received the following message from the Taliban regime: “We will find you and if we find you, we will not let you live”, while athletes trapped at home are said to have buried their sports kits and destroyed their medals.

O’Toole makes the case that a sporting boycott is necessary, but Joyce doesn’t take that view: “The Taliban don’t care either way about cricket in Afghanistan – there was even talk of them preventing men from playing the sport, so if Ireland refuse to play Afghanistan it is just one more thing being taken away from the Afghan people.

“Afghan people absolutely love cricket whether they’re men, women or children; displaced or still in the country”.

There’s also the question of whether a sporting boycott might actually impact the girls who are barred from education beyond primary school, the women who are restricted from public life and all those who face physical abuse. Or would the act simply be for the benefit of those undertaking the boycott itself.

“I disagree with it as the best course of action. Yes, it’s something that has been done before with Apartheid South Africa and worked, but here it risks becoming gesture politics.

“When the international community boycotted Apartheid South Africa it directly affected the oppressors. This would not be the case if the international community took that same position against Afghanistan”.

For Isobel Joyce as a former player, international captain and now a key figure in Irish cricket media, being visible, being seen on a broadcast watched in Afghanistan was the best way she felt she could make an impact. This wasn’t always her view and a chat with a broadcast colleague changed her mind.

“A year out, I was sure I would not work the series, but then I had a brilliant conversation with broadcaster Kate Mason who said to me that I absolutely had to work this series, protest against the rights being taken away from women and girls by being as visible as I could – forcing myself onto Afghan television screens, that was my only recourse to protest against what’s happening to women in that country.”.

Joyce also describes difficult conversations among women working on the Afghanistan series and whether it would be better to simply down tools to highlight the human rights abuses faced by Afghan women.

“The more we talked about it, the more people felt that not working this series as a protest might actually be what the Taliban would want. They won’t allow women to work in their country, so how does it make sense for us to protest that by not doing our jobs? We refused to allow them to dictate what we can and can’t do in our own country”.

So where to next with the Afghanistan issue? What’s a realistic way to progress that will actually see some real change to improve conditions for Afghan Women who are systematically having their human rights taken away under a Taliban regime that just celebrated its fifth year in power.

With the long awaited start of the first edition of the European T20 Premier League there is a sense of things just moving on, new media cycles etc. But human rights abuses don’t move on. They are fought, there are protests, struggles with organised resistance, or they continue often in silence or even acceptance.

It had been reported that Afghan all-rounder Azmatullah Omarzai, who featured in the recent series against Ireland, won’t be taking part in the ETPL. Meanwhile in the Caribbean Premier League there’ll be Afghanistan’s Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Mohammad Nabi, Waqar Salamkheil, Noor Ahmad - all brilliant, very watchable cricketers. But the heavy slog and churn of the cricket world goes on.

Many have aired their views around the recent series but one group that has been silent is the global governing body of the sport, the International Cricket Council.
Cricket Ireland CEO Sarah Keane, to her credit, will lead a task force that is said to work towards ensuring the Afghan women’s team has a clear plan for participating in ICC pathway events as well as looking to support the Afghan women on an ongoing basis.

But is there enough being done by the ICC to interrogate the current regime’s connections with its cricket program? Cricket’s global governing body has previously stated it will not reduce or siphon off money earmarked for the Afghanistan Cricket Board, even though part of the criteria for full membership of the ICC is to support women’s cricket. The ACB is the only full ICC member not to field a women’s team.

Another question is whether the ICC has a long term plan for Afghanistan. The current regime may enjoy the legitimacy of international cricket but in the past it has more tolerated cricket than supported it.

Estimates by the United Nations have previously indicated that around 28 million people in Afghanistan were living in poverty in 2025, with the situation compounded by mass population returns, worsening drought and shrinking international aid; a situation which may get worse.

Meanwhile the European Union has held meetings with the Taliban regime in relation to the EU migration and asylum pact.

Peter Oborne, a veteran political journalist who wrote an acclaimed book on the Basil D’Oliveira affair - which largely led to the Apartheid boycott - recently argued against further isolating the central Asian country on the Second Captains podcast.

“If we just cut it off and let it stay unconnected to the rest of the world, you’re not going to help the Afghan people, you’re not going to help Afghan society, and you’re not going to help the Afghan economy, but we may feel better about ourselves.

“The way that things over time will change is with trade and through actually engaging with Afghanistan, the opposite to South Africa in that way”.

The issue is not something that appears to be going away. However perhaps that’s best, because the more disturbing option would be if this wasn’t talked about at all.

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