Cricket Australia (CA) has called off its ODI series with Afghanistan citing the Taliban’s restrictions on women.
The decision has prompted condemnation from, among others, Afghanistan’s male cricketers who accused CA of politicising the sport, with global superstar Rashid Khan hinting he may no longer feature in the Big Bash League.
Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley responded by saying “basic human rights is not politics”.
But human rights very much is, and should be, the essence of politics, especially in liberal democracies such as Australia, given that absolute egalitarianism is the founding principle of democracy. In this regard, for believers in equality, there are few causes greater than countering the Taliban’s gory persecution of Afghan minorities and women, including the religious ban on female sports.
However, not only does CA’s boycott not provide any actual support to Afghan women, it is also likely to be detrimental to any progress on human rights.
Radical Islamists crave nothing more than lazy virtue-signalling and hollow gesticulation, especially from Western powers, which can sustain their opportunistic victimhood narratives and allow jihadist outfits to pose as freedom fighters. CA has provided the Taliban with just that, at the cost of a mere 30 ICC ODI Super League points, which would have no bearing on the team’s qualification for the ODI World Cup this year.
Australia didn’t forfeit the World T20 game against Afghanistan in November and is unlikely to do the same in India later this year — apparently the importance of Afghan women’s rights falls somewhere between a redundant bilateral series and qualifying for the World Cup knockout stages.
Upholders of moral egalitarianism are bound to ask here if Australia would consider boycotting the World Cup in India over its repressive policies in Kashmir, or forgo multimillion-dollar contracts in the Indian Premier League, which breaches ICC codes to exclusively disqualify Pakistani cricketers. Australian cricketers looked on when the Indian team took to the field in an ODI wearing army caps in 2019, while it was engaged in an aerial dogfight along the Line of Control with Pakistan.
Australia also visited Pakistan in March, 24 years after its last tour to the country, and six months after the Pakistani state facilitated the Taliban regime’s rise for its own jihadist plots. In addition to a wide array of human rights abuses in Pakistan, the country at the time was led by Imran Khan, whose grotesque Islamic sexism contributes to Pakistani women’s plight, and who is ideologically inclined with the Taliban whose suppression of women’s rights Khan has defended.
If Afghanistan as a whole merits a cricketing boycott, surely a political leader such as Khan, who derives almost the entirety of his recognition from cricket, deserved at least a comment from Australia? In South Asia alone, even the likes of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have human rights struggles.
Cricket Australia’s convenient tokenism on Afghanistan, without paying any actual cost, is no different from the Western football nations that chose political sloganeering in Qatar without sitting out the event or taking a stand.
The Western nations using sports for self-serving messaging are also reminded of their own past and present, which isn’t devoid of human rights concerns — especially regarding violations overseas. Both the next World T20 and FIFA World Cup would be co-hosted by the US, and relevant Australian sporting bodies can pick any American newspaper of their choice to find a range of reasons to boycott the country.
This is not to create any false equivalence between states that fall at contrasting levels on the human rights scale. Just that any sporting boycotts will inevitably be selective, and often a corollary of political alliances outside the sport.
Western nations have banned Russia in sports not because of war in Ukraine, but because it is Moscow waging that war — otherwise the world is brimming over with wars, many of them exacerbated, if not initiated, by the West.
Notwithstanding token diplomatic gibberish, no sports team actually boycotted the Beijing Winter Olympics last year, despite China’s concentration camps, annexations, neocolonial expansionism, or human rights subjugation.
And now mighty Australia has opened a new front against minnows Afghanistan. It is likely to be followed by others who, likewise, cannot take a stand against the richer, more powerful violators of human rights — or against their own self-aggrandising exhibitionism.
Does Cricket Australia’s boycott strike you as principled or virtue-signalling? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
