A little over a year before Afghanistan’s triumphs at the Cricket World Cup in India, the team was summoned to the interior ministry in Kabul for a photo call with Sirajuddin Haqqani, the head of a terrorist network responsible for some of the worst suicide attacks during two decades of conflict.
Now the all-powerful interior minister, Haqqani, who led the most radical Taliban faction with ties to al-Qaeda dating back to the 1980s, smiled benevolently as he was joined by a team on the cusp of a remarkable rise towards the top tier of cricket.
