From Kabul to Kolkata, Kunduz to North Carolina, Afghans all over the world are still celebrating the victory of their cricket team over Pakistan in the ICC World Cup match in Chennai Monday, as if there’s no tomorrow. Although, they play Sri Lanka in Pune on 30 October, and just for a split second, imagine, if they win, they will be just one more win away from possibly entering the semi-finals.
In Chennai on Monday, the ninth and last day of Durga Puja, on Mahanavami, the goddess obviously decided to shower her blessings on the boys in blue from Afghanistan. As the drummers beat their dhaks, and makeshift temple bells rang all over the country heralding the devi, the bells were really tolling for the Pakistan cricket team.
Even those, like me, who aren’t crazy aficionados of the game were completely captivated. Clearly, this wasn’t just cricket but the sighs of a nation long suppressed. For a start, the former Islamic Republic’s red, green, and black flag fluttered everywhere in the MA Chidambaram stadium, not the black-and-white shahada of the Islamic Emirate that rules Afghanistan today. And, before the match, it was the national anthem of the former Republic that was played in the stadium.
As Afghanistan celebrated, including with gunfire, after the match was won against Pakistan, even the Taliban were forced to recognise that this was a special moment.
“We congratulate the national cricket team, cricket board, and all Afghans on this victory,” said Maulvi Abdul Kabir, political deputy prime minister of Afghanistan. “This competition showed that Afghan youths are capable in any field and can win. We wish them more success.”
Kabir knew he was treading on delicate ground. The Afghanistan women’s cricket team has practically disappeared — its players have either fled abroad or gone underground – like most other women’s sports and activities, including the public education of girl children beyond Class V.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) is still contemplating whether or not to remove Afghanistan as a member, as a sign of its displeasure with the Taliban’s treatment of women’s cricket. But that would also effectively mean that Afghanistan’s men will be banned from playing international matches.
Also read: Pakistan pushing Afghans back to Kabul is a signal—Durand Line is a border, not a frontier
Why is Afghanistan celebrating?
The question remains: Why is all of Afghanistan, its cricket team, India, and several other parts of the world so thrilled that the Afghans have beaten the Pakistanis? Moreover, why is Pakistan having such a meltdown? From the fancied Wasim Akram to lesser-known faces on TV, what has shaken the confidence of Pakistan cricket and a large section of its nation so much that they are behaving as if Pakistan has just lost a war?
The answer, as always, is complicated. A short history is in order: As its neighbour in the south, Pakistan has been integral to Afghanistan’s fate and fortunes over the decades. During the Soviet war (1979-1989), Pakistan ganged up with the United States to supply arms to the Afghan mujahideen. When the Soviets were defeated and the Taliban came to power in 1996, ruling the country with its own brutal version of Islam, Pakistan was one of three countries—besides Saudi Arabia and the UAE—that recognised it.
Then the 11 September 2001 attacks on America took place and the world changed. Months later, the Taliban were ousted, the Pakistani military establishment got a bloody nose, and Hamid Karzai came to power, promising a Naya Afghanistan.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Afghan cricket team today is that most players were born after the 9/11 attacks. This means they have little clue about the intense trials and severe deprivations their parents were forced to undergo during the Soviet war and the first Taliban rule. This also means they have largely grown up in the free, Islamic republic ruled by Karzai and Ashraf Ghani that lasted 20 years — before it fell to the Taliban again in 2021 — and possess none of the submissive manner associated with refugees who spent decades in Pakistani camps.
For example, Ibrahim Zadran, awarded the man of the match in Chennai, used the occasion to remind the world that his Afghan refugee brethren, as many as 1.7 million people, were being unkindly evicted by the Pakistani authorities, spurring a humanitarian crisis in its wake.
This young Afghan team is also drawn from all over the country – and like the Indian team, diversity is clearly a strength. Ibrahim (born in December 2001, when the US bombed the Taliban into submission) is from the Zadran tribe that lives on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The community is reputed for its fighting capabilities — the well-known mujahideen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, the founder of the Haqqani Network, belonged to the Zadran tribe, as do his sons Sirajuddin, the Taliban interior minister in Kabul, and Anas Haqqani, a leader in the Islamic Emirate.
Noor Ahmad Lakanwal, a stripling of 18 years who took the scalps of Pakistani batters Abdullah Shafique, Babar Azam, and Muhammad Rizwan in his World Cup debut, hails from Herat, which was recently devastated by several earthquakes that killed hundreds of people. Rahmanullah Gurbaz, to whom Babar Azam gifted his bat, was born in November 2001 and belongs to the Gurbaz tribe, which lives just on the other side of Pakistan’s North Waziristan.
Even the few older men in the Afghan team were wealthier and fortunate enough not to have grown up in the refugee camps that dot Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For example, Mohammad Nabi grew up and learnt to play cricket in Peshawar where his parents had fled escaping the Soviet war. Similarly, Rashid Khan, born during Taliban rule in Jalalabad in 1998, moved to Pakistan with his 10 siblings and other family members for a few years and returned home after the 9/11 turmoil.
Also read: UN report says Taliban showing no signs of ‘bending’ to pressure for reform, has split leadership
What’s behind Pakistan’s meltdown
The question of the Pakistani meltdown remains. Why did half of Pakistan react so badly to being beaten by the Afghans? Why did some cricket commentators weep on air—“How could you lose to Afghanistan!”—and some others called captain Babar Azam unprintable names.
The answer is embedded in the bitter history that the two neighbours share, made much more complicated by the fact that the Pakistani military establishment as well as the Taliban regime were once so close but have fallen out more recently.
The meltdown also means that Pakistanis in general are increasingly having to come to terms with losing to India — after all, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma and the rest are world-class players – but cannot imagine losing to a team that not only doesn’t have a real country but whose rulers are dependent on Rawalpindi.
Then there is the inescapable fact of the Pakistani military establishment, which believes that they put the Taliban in power again and that the ungrateful Taliban is now coming to bite the hand that fed it.
Certainly, the Taliban was once the cat’s paw of the Pakistani military establishment, which funded it, gave it weapons support, and imparted military training and strategic direction when the Taliban fought the US-led coalition for 20 years. So, when they came to power in 2021, the Pakistanis celebrated – the visit of Pakistan’s then-intelligence chief Gen Faiz Hameed, within days of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban, was seen as the ultimate stamp of this radicalised collaboration.
But things have not quite worked out that way. The Taliban has complained that the Pakistanis are not being as friendly. An agreement between the Pakistan Taliban and the Islamabad government, brokered by Sirajuddin Haqqani, broke down in November 2022, which meant that the Pakistani militant outfit took shelter in Afghan territory and carried out attacks inside Pakistan. This September, though, Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi promised that this support would cease.
It is in this bleak, grey zone that Afghanistan continues to operate, two years after the Taliban took over on 15 August 2021. The Taliban are still not recognised by the international community, which means they still don’t have a seat at the UN. The Afghan economy remains in terrible shape, with $3.5 billion frozen in a Swiss bank Afghan Fund controlled by the US; the remaining $3.5 billion was controversially allocated to the victims of the 9/11 attack. The UN’s World Food Programme is providing aid to half the population to stave off hunger. And if you thought it was impossible for things to get worse in this benighted country, well, they did, a few weeks ago with the earthquake that flattened most of Herat.
Also read: Why Pakistan accuses Taliban of doing what it has been doing to India — abetting terrorism
More than just cricket
The move toward normalisation remains very slow. The first talks between US officials and Taliban representatives took place only a couple of months ago, in Doha, no doubt spurred by the fact that China has recently sent an ambassador-level diplomat to Kabul. Western governments have posted mid-ranking diplomats to Afghanistan, and the US wants to continue to keep an eye on this part of the world even though it was forced to exit in the shameful manner that it did in 2021.
For the moment, though, this week belongs to the plucky Afghan team that has fought so bravely. Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan’s little jig on the field at the end of the Afghanistan-Pakistan match, which ended in an embrace of Rashid Khan, has since become emblematic of the joy the world feels about a bunch of men who refuse to give up.
That’s why, in moments like this, cricket is more than just a sport – it is also the story of a people who have so bravely and so often wagered on the game of life.
Jyoti Malhotra is a senior consulting editor at ThePrint. She tweets @jomalhotra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)