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A Good Sport? – politicalbetting.com
A Good Sport? – politicalbetting.com
The Taliban has issued its latest pronouncement on women. Women must not be visible from house windows. If they’re in a kitchen with a window, they must stay away from it. On no account must they be seen from the outside. Not content with depriving them of all political and civic rights, imprisoning them from head to toe in cloth, preventing them from being outside at all, other than with a male relative, forbidding their voices from being heard – even in prayer – or speaking to other women, the Taliban have now decided that women and girls must be literally hidden away unseen in the home. Afghan women and girls are unable to work, receive an education, sing, dance, make music, play sport, go outside, take exercise, speak with other women, or have access to social media. If they break these rules, they are beaten or whipped. Stoning has been reintroduced. They cannot be educated at all. If ill, they cannot be treated by male doctors. But since women cannot become doctors or nurses, they will have no medical care at all. They will suffer and die. Their only role is to provide sexual services to the husbands they are sold to as children, bear children and be domestic slaves. It is a living death. Working animals are treated better.
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I also think that the aid agencies need to reflect on whether their support (in terms of providing very basic needs) for such a regime can be justified by the appalling suffering of its people. Of course we would have to accept that such an approach would greatly increase the number of refugees from this shambles of a country.
I have never mastered the picture thing but there are images of him here: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=jonathan+trott&cbn=KnowledgeCard&stid=ad920f8a-890f-c2a3-2f3b-9d0f1190e14b&thid=OSK.HEROUJnrmT5TDq5aRGNR8KEsc3UcA1Aw7LESfuZeg7I1ORY&form=KCHIMM&first=1&disoverlay=1
I agree with David too, that aid should not be going to Afghanistan. If the Taliban wants to treat its people like this* they should do so without any aid or support of any kind.
* That's their choice not ours, sadly, we spent far too much time, blood and treasure trying and failing to make Afghanistan a better place.
All matches against an Afghan team take place outside Afghanistan. 'Home' games are played in the UAE. And I'm not sure that Afghan players are 'welcomed' by the Taliban' government.
That's not to be read as sympathetic to the Taliban, who, I think, generally held to be outside decent Muslim society.
100% agree
The world has had and has sporting and cultural relations with North Korea, Syria, Russia, the Saudis, China, Israel, Iran and so on.
The use of torture, gulags, death squads, concentration camps, brainwashing etc is unacceptable everywhere and at all times.
At all times basically one can say: Contact is important so that glimpses can be discerned of alternative ways.
Or one can say: Principals tell us to boycott this whatever, right now.
Picking out an individual such as Trott, out of all the people who can and could take some sort of action seems to me misplaced.
Having said that, I nearly always agree with Cyclefree about nearly everything. But I am cautious about this one.
SFAICS the only force which can change things is the women and men of Afghanistan. United populations have an unstoppable power.
Does anyone know if there is a Government petition raised for this already? I can't find one. I'm thinking it might be a good way to raise publicity and support for a boycott.
Edit. Apartheid/ Gender Apartheid I suppose. In that case it makes perfect sense.
It's easy to boycott a poor country with appalling treatment of women.
Many major sports, including the biggest in football, seem happy to fully embrace a very rich country with slightly less appalling treatment of women.
Or, you could say it's none of our business, somewhat overegged, and their culture/country, and - outside Kabul - these policies and attitudes are far more widespread that we'd care to admit and this is just typical Western liberal handwringing.
I would recommend this book.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Basil-DOliveira-Controversy-Peter-Oborne/dp/0751534889
If it is unarguable (as you indicate) that Cyclefree is right, then is it possible for the universe to contain the list of principled things people must or must not do in the light of the horrendous evils of the powerful in order to act consistently with this request to Trott?
Cyclefree treats an individual rather unfairly IMHO.
In the late seventies, early eighties I used to see Basil (and Damien) wandering around Worcester. Basil comported himself like a mere mortal rather than the God he was
Doesn't it?
This makes it a little different to turning up in Afghanistan itself, for which there’s a much better argument for a boycott, or at least a move to a neutral country.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/icc-champions-trophy-2024-25-1459031/afghanistan-vs-england-8th-match-group-b-1466421/live-cricket-score
Australia (and South Africa) are also in England’s and Afghanistan’s group in the tournament, and have said they will play - although the Aussies did cancel bilateral touring events between the two countries.
https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2024/12/5/cricket-australia-defends-afghanistan-boycott-after-hypocrisy-accusation
Some groups have an ineradicable desire to turn their countries into cesspits.
I agree that awarding the World Cup to Saudi was a very poor decision.
I think we need to rethink the Olympics too, which is also bloated and far too expensive for the vast majority of countries to host, and often used by regimes to sports-wash their tyrannies.
We failed in our attempts to fix it, but Afghanistan was already broken long before 9/11.
To begin with, let me say that the developments in Afghanistan post-withdrawal have been both tragic and inevitable. We know exactly what the Taliban is like, we knew that the Afghan army was corrupt, unmotivated, and lacked a binding ethos either to itself or within the country, just as the central government did. It was all but certain that the government would fall and the army would capitulate; all that was to be decided was how long that would take, and how unreformed the Taliban was. As it turned out, days rather than months to fall, and a couple of years to demonstrate the extent of their benightedness (which may well not yet have reached its nadir).
The question for Western politicians and activists is what can be done to change this - to which the answer, I suspect, is nothing.
The example usually cited when it comes to the effectiveness of sporting sanctions is South Africa, from about the late 1960s (not-so-coincidentally exactly the same time when the USA decided it was finally time to sort out its own apartheid, which till then had made very little impact on activists elsewhere in the world), until its fall in the late 1980s (also, not-so-coincidentally, at the same time as end of the Cold War).
But South Africa is the exception, not the rule - and even then took 20 years. Every other sporting boycott - and there have been many, mostly now forgotten - has failed. Why did it work in the South African case? Several reasons.
As with all disasters lessons will be learnt but sadly at the loss of innocent lives
- It mattered to those in charge. Sanctions work when those taking the decisions feel the impact of them. The boycott didn't of itself end apartheid - the geopolitical realities of a changing world did that - but it did contribute to the decision.
- South Africa was a democracy, of sorts. Obviously an imperfect one but what the white population felt directly impacted the government, and the sporting ban had an emotional effect there, as did the international disapproval.
- Apartheid was causing plenty of internal problems anyway for South Africa's leadership by the 1980s and was primarily justified by them, outside of the neo-Nazi far right, on practical grounds. When the practical benefits of it, to them, ceased to exceed the difficulties, reform came.
Pretty much none of these apply to Afghanistan. As with all religious zealots, they care little for outside opinion because theirs is the true and righteous path. Pain and suffering are to be endured, and may even be necessary (particularly by others), on the road to (an other-worldly) paradise. If the ICC will not ban Afghanistan, and other countries will not boycott them too (and Australia, despite their bilateral boycott, isn't doing so within tournaments), then a one-off gesture by England will have no effect other than to increase Afghanistan's chances of progressing in the competition, which would probably have the opposite effect of that desired.
What the government could do is introduce a stricter sanctions regime, which could include a ban on any UK citizen working for any Afghan business or agency (never mind the govt), and would prevent the likes of Trott working there, as well as all trade other than in very restricted and pre-specified areas (eg media coverage). It wouldn't have any meaningful impact either but would at least be more consistent and would be a national government taking a decision rather than expecting individuals and agencies to form their own foreign policy.
Prior to 9/11 we hadn't been directly involved for a very long time.
If we were responsible, Afghanistan would be a much better place, but they don't want us involved even when we tried to fix things and failed to do so.
The Afghani population needs to take some accountability for its choices.
He effectively restarted the Cold War that year, and we know how that turned out.
Taylor's intellectual subordinates like Gareth Edwards continue to justify themselves with " I just wanted to play rugby against the best in thee world. I wasn't interested in the politics".*
*My precis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(rugby_union,_born_1945)
Tbf to the Afghans if Britain 'tried to fix things and failed to do so', probably wise to tell us to eff off.
If they were worried about overruns onto the road past the end, there exist arrestor materials designed to slow an over-running aircraft in something approaching a controlled manner https://runwaysafe.com/mitigating-runway-overrun-risks-with-emas-a-proactive-approach/
On a different day or a different place this was a survivable accident, although a plane with no gear or flaps is going to land much faster than normal and reduce its energy a lot more slowly.
What’s slightly concerning is a handful of incidents involving hydraulic issues on planes in the last few days. A conspiracy theorist might think they were somehow related, but one hopes that the professional investigators don’t immediately rule out possible sabotage.
In 1987 we even sent James Bond.
There was a very funny, funky and enjoyable song about the Christian peanut farmer everyman,that we used to enjoy at school.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwzFSeB4s2Y&pp=ygUiR290dGEgaGF2ZSBhIGxpdHRpZSB0YWxuUGVhbnV0IG1hbg==
RIP Jimmy C.
Then there was the Revolution and the Soviet invasion, which the 'more enthusiastic' Muslims opposed, and were aided in their opposition by the West.
Unfortunately those Muslims developed into the Taliban.
https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/champions-trophy-2025-schedule-india-vs-pakistan-date-full-match-fixtures-list-9699022/
The Taliban are to blame for what they have done subsequently.
We'd been there 18 years by then. At what stage is enough, enough?
Carlsen to rejoin chess championship after jeans dispute resolved
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8npkrey66o
Sometimes the player is bigger than the sport, or at least the tournament organisers. Another example might be Ronaldo wiping $4 billion off Coca-Cola's market cap by removing the sponsor's bottles in favour of water.
Jonathan Trott is not responsible for Britain's foreign policy. But he does, I assume, have a conscience and make his own decisions about who to work for. It is legitimate to ask him why he has chosen to work for this country given what is known about how it treats its women and, specifically, its sportswomen. There was an Afghan girls cricket team and there is now one playing in Australia consisting of Afghan women refugees.
There are lots of other people within English cricket and the International cricketing authorities who need to think about the same issues. Trott is merely one of many. I included him as an example.
If you want to watch a glimpse of his prowess watch his last innings in One Day Cup Final at Lords on his 40s in gathering gloom on one leg, with a runner in the pre floodlight days.
I was bought up with the second of 3 great Worcester teams of the 60 / 70 / 80 era... The 70s era
Glenn Turner, Ron Headley, Graveny, Dolly, Vanburn Holder, Norman Gifford and 2 examples of something you don't see now... Ted Helmsley and Jimmy Coombes who played professional Cricket in the Summer and Professional League top 2 Division soccer in the winter.
Great memories.
It was the disgraceful way Dolly was treated that saw me active in the anti apartheid movement from the late 70s.
We'll leave chasing Zola mercenary Buds around Perry Barr Athletics track for another day.
All this reminds me of why I despise Musk today with a passion.
A runt of pure evil Apartheid white supremist DNA..
What you see, hear and learn growing up from stories like Dolly defines you.
It's not so easy to boycott the countries we need stuff from. We should never be attending sporting events involving many, many rich nations. The Quatar World Cup is an obvious example. Our sports stars can't fill their pockets fast enough from despotic regimes.
If we boycott Afghanistan, morally we have to boycott the others. We won't.
You give him a fine afterwards, spend the money on chess sets for the public park local to the tournament, and have him turn up in his jeans to play against the local kids - something that he would probably do anyway.
It's easy to forget how much more similar to the West other urban parts of the world used to be, because of both the rise of islamism in Asia, and also the supposedly eternal "Clash of
Civiliations" talk, from the side of the Western Right, have obscured this.
Afghanistan must be unique, as a society where the men prefer sex with each other, to sex with women
Of much more importance (because it actually can make a difference), is tackling cultural misogyny here in the UK, including, but not only, in ethnic groups linked to South Asia. Education and support matter here but so, frankly, does the immigration policy. Good work with people already here is too easily undone if we just keep re-importing the same attitudes. And it will also mean taking on attitudes that some (many?) see as not social or cultural but religious - and frankly the boundaries between the three are so blurry that it's of doubtful utility to split the difference anyway.
That will not be easy. It will come up against resistance from both inside these communities and also from people claiming to be allies outside. It will be latched on to by the radical right for their own purposes and could easily be discredited merely by that association. There will be women within these communities who say they don't want things to change, and may be sincere in that, and where they are, could easily be paraded and misused to claim there isn't a problem (see women against suffrage 100-150 years ago).
And, of course, ethnic misogyny is far from the only place where anti-women attitudes exist. Other, similar programs would need to run alongside to challenge attitudes, assumptions and behaviours.
One of my fathers cousins hitchhiked through that way in the Sixties, even getting arrested for insulting the Shah briefly, before winding up in Bombay. He ran out of money there, saw a British ship in the port and went aboard to see if he could work a passage home. It turned out to be a migrant ship to Australia, but that didn't bother him. The only requirement was that he join the Seamans Union. He has lived in Sydney since.
To the extent that sporting sanctions work, the ECB (or TCCB or MCC or whoever was in charge then) did the right thing by refusing to back down and selecting a team on merit rather than to fit in with unacceptable local rules.
The same should apply re Afghanistan. Ensure that female members of staff are visible and that broadcasters will not amend their teams because the the sensitivities of the opposition (or locals - the match will be played in Pakistan).
Needless to say my uncle, a gruff green wellies type from Gloucestershire with a tractor, thought this was all a lot of nonsense.
No international sport should be placing their contests in countries where their players will have such restrictions put upon them.
In general though the attitudes of Hippies was for a fairly exploitative form of sexual liberation that favoured men. We see it in so many of the historic sexual scandals of the Sixties and Seventies involving celebrities.
It can happen anywhere, anytime, in the right (wrong) circumstances.
Cricket (and even more so Rugby Union) had to be forcibly dragged to apply the boycott to South Africa.
Even then there were rebel tours and scores of English pro's playing/coaching in South Africa during the winter months.
I'd even go as far to say what is the point of aid agencies trying to tackle malnutrition and provide heathcare in Afghanistan. It won't get better while the Taliban continue as they are.
I remember relatives around me growing up being very inspired by multiple female hippie figures around me, though , Joan Baez, Gilli Smyth,
Joni Mitchell, and many others
It’s a slow process, but I do actually think that attitudes in Saudi have been changing in the past few years, as a younger generation is taking over the country. As an example, there were quite a few ladies with no headscarves in the crowd at the boxing in Riyadh last week. https://ww.youtube.com/watch?v=3hPGzcpovoo
The F1 races there have also had many women working for the teams and in the media, with no obvious dress code. This year they even had a support race for only women drivers. I still can’t see there being too many bars at the World Cup though.