In “A Cricket Ban Won’t Hurt the Taliban” (op-ed, Sept. 14), Tunku Varadarajan writes, “In Afghanistan a theocratic minority denies political rights to everyone. Unlike in South Africa, however, no non-Taliban Afghan would want a boycott of the national cricket team.”
The Taliban deny rights to men, but they are denying far more rights to women. Despite the Democrats’ claim to be champions of women, they abandoned Afghan women to cruel and violent fates under Taliban rule. Women risk losing everything from inheritance rights to divorce rights to wardrobe choices in suffocating heat. They’ll be stuck with forced obedience to a husband and risk vile “honor killings” if they are victims of rape. Denying women access to public sports, including cricket, is another way the Taliban will erase women from public life.
Regardless of whether boycotts work, it’s easy to imagine many Afghan women supporting a cricket boycott to bring attention to their desperate plight.