If you build it, they will come... with their wickets: Afghanistan FTW!

I am truly one of the last people you should expect to see writing anything about sports.

I'm a born and bred American who watched my first Superbowl only 3 years ago (I am several decades into my existence on this earth). And my first real awareness of it was only when it was postponed after 9/11 and how that kind of screwed the schedule up so now it always happens later. I grew up in Southern California during the years when the Lakers were Magic and there were apparently ticker tape parades happening on a regular basis and I honestly only made concrete in my head maybe a year or two ago that the NBA championships 1) are a thing and 2) happen in May. This despite the fact that my grandfather, who I grew up with in the house, was a die-hard basketball fan and former college player for a big b-ball school. And two days ago, I learned there is a basketball team called the Golden State somethings from where else but my home state and that they're actually like kind of famous right now.

Incredibly, I also have a very special place in my heart for sports movies. Thank god I was alone when I watched, in the privacy of a darkened economy class flight somewhere over an ocean, "61*." Long, heavy tears rolled down my face as I watched Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris battle it out over something sportsy during the fateful summer of 1961. "A League of Their Own," "The Cutting Edge," "The Wrestler," "Radio," all take places of pride in my fondest movie-watching memories.

You don't need to be a cinema critical theorist or a psychologist to pick out what's going on here--clearly I like a good underdog story that starts with a struggle, wraps up nicely with a feelgood happy and/or successful ending, and the earnest, moral-of-the-story cherry on top together make the perfect recipe to bring on a very satisfying crying session. Forget chick flicks, nothing is a surer tearjerker than seeing those hardworking kids/down-on-their-luck hockey players/aged former stars bring home the gold/take down one last foe/finally get their chance to take the field. And "Rudy" is iconic for teaching us that dreams are the stuff of perseverance and for making the slow clap a national phenomenon.

 

Which all segues very obviously to how will this impact Afghanistan?

What? You aren't following the Cricket World Cup with bitten-to-the-nubs fingernails?

Okay, I admit, I understand the rules of Quidditch better than I know anything that involves cricket. But something amazing is happening right now in New Zealand, and I'm not just excited because of the heartwarming sports movie potential (though I'm obvs pretty happy about that... Hollywood, wake up, you're on, it's time to pay attention.)

First, there's the fact that Afghanistan is playing the Cricket World Cup at all. Hello, this place has been war-torn for decades, fighting off heavily armed foreign invaders and violently dogmatic domestic terrorists.

Second, cricket has only been a serious thing in Afghanistan since 2001! Is there any better meet-cute beginning than war refugees picking up the game while growing up in exile in neighboring Pakistan, where cricket is serious business, and bringing the enthusiasm and skill for the game back with them to their home country after the U. S. of A. took down the evil Taliban?! (Seriously, Hollywood, I'm doing ALL.THE.WORK.FOR.YOU.)

Third, in this transition year of 2015 in regards to the character of future US engagement with Afghanistan, with all the hand-wringing from SIGAR and the DOD and the State Department and POTUS about what programs US taxpayers have funded and which ones worked and what ones are effective yada yada yada, maybe the place money could make a BIG DIFFERENCE is if we NBA/NFL/MLB-ed the shit out of that sport in Afghanistan and turned it into the nationally galvanizing/money-making machine (read: tax revenue providing! Taxes fund good governance!) that it could be. What could make a more epic story than the little sport that could turning a whole country from the Bad News Bears to the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series??

Fourth, Afghanistan just won its first game in the Cricket World Cup! They're gonna leave the Cubs in their dust at this rate.

Take a knee, everyone.

Look, this team isn't just an underdog in the cricket world, its country is an underdog in the world world. There have been amazing development gains in Afghanistan in the last ten years--dramatically increased life expectancy; game-changer level reduction of maternal mortality and all that is indicative of in terms of general healthcare access, nutrition, women's education and literacy, etc.,; unprecedented school attendance for boys and girls across socio-economic strata.

Yet, with all these gains, Afghanistan still ranks as one of the poorest countries in the world, continues to be fraught with violence from within and threats from beyond its borders, all while waiting with baited breath with the uncertainty of what will happen to the country's ephemeral security and seedling economy when the U.S. packs up its last boots sometime in the next few years.

Sure, you could say I'm selling idealism in its naivest form by framing this story as the best sports movie ever made, but I'll counter with, So what?! Sometimes underdogs need their story to be told with high production values and record-busting opening weekend ticket sales! What the hell kind of contribution to human society is the "Ironman" franchise when compared to the David-triumphing-over-Goliath lesson of "Miracle"?!

(And if we really want to tone down the idealism and naivete of this proposal, let's get the World Cricket Federation--Is that a thing?--on board for some promotional effect and some heavy product placement for American goods that would appeal to Afghan markets and we'll be on the right track to wipe that slimey sheen of earnestness right off this project.)

Anyway, I'll be paying attention to the news of how Afghanistan fares in the 2015 Cricket World Cup and keeping my fingers crossed that whether the outcome is more gold medal or more "Cool Runnings," Hollywood and Washington both have their eyes open and their idea hats on for making the most out of the country's heartwarming, tearjerking triumphs in cricket.

Take heart, Team Afghanistan, like Coach says, you were born for this.

believe it or not, gender equality is something they've gotten right in Afghanistan...

This is adapted from a chat conversation I had with a friend of mine in December. Obviously, the message in the title of this post is relative to where the country was politically 10-20 years ago and where it is now. Women are present in the parliament even if they were included initially only as tokens for gender equality, they have staked their claim in the legislature and will not give it up without a fight.

At the time of this chat, I was neck-deep in research about Rwanda's post-conflict development and security and the role women's political participation has played in the country's thus far stable and ongoing progress. The paper was my final assignment for an amazing class I took about conflict and reconstruction using Afghanistan as a case study, but which featured no specific discussion of women's roles and rights in post-2001 Afghanistan. My paper was my effort to bring women and security into the conversation about long-term peace and development in post-conflict areas.

Friend: To a certain extent, isn't Afghanistan kind of an exceptional conflict?

Me: It is, but it isn't. It's had like every version of conflict around. So, if you look at the history and the pockets of conflict, it's useful for studying other types of conflict, though I think it's mostly a lesson of "what not to do"... Like see what we did in Afghanistan? Now do the opposite.

EXCEPT... incredibly... how they've incorporated women politically...

The fact that there is a woman who has already announced her intention to run for president in 2014 is amazing... 

even if nothing else happens
even if she doesn't run
even if she doesn't win
even if she turns out to be a big fraud and corrupt and horrible (which I don't think she is, she's pretty inspiring). 

The fact that it would even be conceivable for a woman to joke about running for president of Afghanistan considering where the country was 10 years ago and what most Afghan women's daily lives look like today...

It's like going from the Declaration of Independence to landing on the moon in a decade instead of two centuries. 

And, btw, she's not joking.