Afghanistan are on account of play 5 matches in Ireland this summer season – however ought to we be internet hosting representatives of a regime that has simply legalised wife-beating?

BACK in the late 1970s, posters started appearing on the lamp-posts around Lansdowne Road in Dublin showing, in silhouette, uniformed men using long sticks to beat other humans.

The photograph was taken from the infamous Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 when South African police fired on a crowd protesting unjust laws and killed 91 people.

Underneath, in bold black print, ran the slogan ‘If you could see their national sport, you might be less keen to see their rugby’.

At the time the IRFU was mulling an invitation to visit South Africa, a pariah nation where a series of laws discriminated against non-white citizens and a brutal police force repressed anyone who spoke out in dissent. To their eternal shame the IRFU accepted the invite and toured apartheid South Africa in 1981, although four senior Irish players – Donal Spring, Hugo MacNeill, Tony Ward and Moss Keane – refused to travel.

Apartheid’s days were numbered – partly due to a sporting boycott – and since then South African rugby, cricket and football teams have all played here.

But those powerful posters may be due a revival, albeit with a different target.

Cricket Ireland is expected to announce shortly that it will be hosting Afghanistan for a short tour in August, playing five white ball games in Belfast and Bready.

The Afghans are a talented, exciting side, elevated to the top table of the sport at the same time as Ireland eight years ago, but markedly more successful since, at least in men’s cricket.

We don’t know how good their women are however, because the Taliban refuses to allow women play sport – among many other things – and almost the entire Afghan women’s side have fled into exile in Australia.

The story of Afghan cricket is, on the face of it, one of the more inspiring in modern sport. Cricket was almost unheard of in the country, but after the Russian invasion of 1980 hundreds of thousands left for refugee camps in Pakistan. There they came across the game and soon discovered a natural aptitude for it.

After spending time playing in Pakistan’s domestic competition, they returned home and set up a local infrastructure. They joined the ICC and entered the World Cup qualifying pyramid. Amazingly, with a side mostly born in those refugee camps, they progressed through five tournaments, falling only at the final hurdle.

The American occupation was of benefit to Afghan cricket, with the US funding an international stadium in Kabul and, with India, several others around the country.

There are now nine stadia with a capacity of at least 5,000 – Ireland currently have none although the stadium in Abbotstown, with 4,240 fixed seats and room to expand, is due to open in 2029.

With a side of pacy seamers, wily spinners and aggressive batsmen, the ACB joined the top rank of associates and began a close rivalry with Ireland, which continued for a decade till they were both elevated to full membership.

Afghanistan won four of their first 10 Tests, the best record at that stage of any side since the 1880s, and reached the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup in 2024. Their leg-spinner Rashid Khan is top of the world ODI bowling rankings, while Ibrahim Zadran is the third ranked batsman.

Their women’s side have had a much smaller slice of the international cake since they were first established in 2010. They entered the Asian Women’s T20 championship in Kuwait the following year but Islamic militants protested their presence and they were forced to withdraw.

The Taliban had been ousted from power by the US invasion after 2001 but progress in women’s rights was slow under President Karzai, who issued a code of conduct which stated ‘women should not travel without a male guardian and should not mingle with strange men in places such as schools, markets and offices’.

In 2012, Afghanistan’s women cricketers took part in – and won – a six-nation tournament in Tajikistan but that was their only international foray and they were disbanded in 2014. The ACB reinstated the side six years ago but the US withdrawal in 2021, and the resumption of Taliban rule, put an end to that project.

Under the fundamentalists, basic women’s rights have been curtailed. Girls are forbidden access to secondary and third-level education and work outside the home. As women’s faces and bodies cannot be seen by men, the absence of women doctors effectively removes access to health care.

According to a 2023 report of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, ‘The Taliban in Afghanistan have systematically restricted the human rights of women and girls and suffocated all aspects of their lives… such treatment could amount to “gender apartheid”.’

In the face of such cruelties, the idea of playing sport against such a nation is abhorrent. Ireland should not even be put in this position, as part of the criteria for Full Member status of ICC is that national boards are required to maintain a women’s team, and have satisfactory pathway and domestic competition structures in place to support it.

Further to that, the ICC says members must develop young female cricketers, providing access to competitions, facilities, and equipment ‘comparable to their male counterparts’.

But since 2021, all sport for women and girls has been closed down by the Taliban – and the ICC has turned a blind eye.

Government official Ahmadullah Wasiq said at the time: ‘I don’t think women will be allowed to play cricket because it is not necessary that women should play cricket. 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.

‘It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it. Islam and the Islamic Emirate [Afghanistan] do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed.’

Although three Afghan women based abroad competed at the Paris Olympics, all of the ACB’s contracted women went into hiding before they were offered a safe haven down under by the Australian Cricket Board.

These women formed a refugee national team in Australia, and won the support of ICC which promised them high-performance initiatives and domestic playing opportunities. They will also receive ‘key engagement opportunities’ at this year’s T20 World Cup in England, whatever that means.

One of the arguments put forward by anti-apartheid advocates in the 1980s was that you cannot have normal sporting links with an abnormal society.

There is no doubt that Afghanistan is a far from normal society. Last month Eliana Silver, the Mail’s Senior Foreign News Reporter, revealed that the Taliban has passed a new law allowing husbands to beat their wives as long as there is no serious bodily harm.

The new criminal code divided Afghan society into four categories: religious scholars, the elite, middle-class, and lower-class. The latter is divided into people who are ‘free’ or ‘slaves’, with all Afghan women designated as slaves.

Silver explained: ‘Regarding violence against women, Article 32 states that only if the husband beats the woman with a stick and this act results in severe injury such as “a wound or bodily bruising”, and the woman can prove it before a judge, will the husband be sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment.

‘However, the contradiction lies in that a woman must remain fully covered while simultaneously proving her injuries to a judge.’

Cricket Ireland has already broken new ground by appointing the first female CEO to the governing body of an ICC full member. The idea that Sarah Keane will have to welcome officials from that regime and watch a side representing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan standing beneath their flag on Irish soil is repugnant.

England and Australia refuse to play bi-lateral fixtures against the Afghans, meaning they will only play them in ICC competition. Ireland’s fixture list is much smaller than the Ashes powers, and Cricket Ireland struggles to attract sides to come here. But while Afghanistan treats half its population as slaves they do not deserve to meet Irish teams on a sporting field.

This ill-conceived tour must be cancelled.