Taliban Aims to Forbid Women From Playing Sport

By Ewelina Lepionko

The Taliban rule has begun in Afghanistan and with this, curb humanitarian rights along with discrimination suffered by women including in areas of sport has also begun.

Afghan girls play cricket on school grounds in Kabul in 2010. At the time, Afghanistan was set to select its first national women's cricket team. But a Taliban official now reportedly says women won't be allowed to play it and other sports.

Taliban's earlier claims of being a changed and more inclusive regime seem to fall apart. But this come more of a shock to the outside world than the women of Afghanistan who feared this was coming. Every woman playing sports is not safe right now.

Women’s sport was considered neither appropriate nor necessary.

The Taliban will ban Afghan women from playing sport because 'their face and body will not be covered'. 

The country's newly picked deputy culture minister, Ahmadullah Wasiq, has confirmed the Taliban's Sharia law interpretation regarding women's sport. Australian public broadcaster SBS has quoted the deputy head of the Taliban's cultural commission:

"I don't think women will be allowed to play cricket because it is not necessary that women should play cricket," said Ahmadullah Wasiq, deputy head of the Taliban's cultural commission.

Afghanistan has a national women's cricket team — but its status has been thrown into question along with every other woman in the country after the Taliban ousted the U.S.-backed government. 

"In cricket, they might face a situation where their face and body will not be covered. Islam does not allow women to be seen like this."

The Taliban’s attitudes towards women and their individual rights should not be accepted by the international sporting community.

The Taliban have stated that women will be able to return to work, however, those hopes are rapidly diminishing with the brutal treatment of those who have taken to the streets in protest for their basic human rights.

Their lives have been turned upside down by the sudden withdrawal of US troops that left the American-backed government in Kabul to collapse.

Following nearly two decades of conflict, the Taliban reclaimed Afghanistan's capital and took over the country's presidential palace, barely a month after the US began the final withdrawal of military troops from its longest-running war.

On Tuesday, the Taliban announced the formation of a hardline interim government for the country, filling top posts with veterans of the militant group.