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Lahore (Pakistan) (AFP) – Members of Afghanistan’s national girls’ football team have fled across the border into Pakistan dressed in burqas, a month after the hardline Taliban swept back into power, officials said Wednesday.
The group of junior players and their coaches and families had tried to escape the country last month but a devastating bomb attack at Kabul airport left them stranded, someone close to the team told AFP.
“I received a request for their rescue from another England-based NGO, so I wrote to Prime Minister Imran Khan who issued clearance for them to land in Pakistan,” said Sardar Naveed Haider, an ambassador of global development NGO Football for Peace, based in London.
In total, more than 75 people crossed the northern border on Tuesday, before travelling south to the city of Lahore where they were greeted with flower garlands.
The girls who played for the under-14, under-16 and under-18 teams crossed the land border dressed in burqas, Haider said, before they later changed into headscarves.
Afghanistan’s new rulers, which banned women from playing all sport during their first rule in the 1990s, have indicated that women and girls will face restrictions in playing sport.
A senior Taliban official has told Australian media it was “not necessary” for women to play.&nbsp;
But on Tuesday, Bashir Ahmad Rustamzai, Afghanistan’s new director general for sports said top-level Taliban leaders were still deciding.&nbsp;
Pakistan’s federal minister for information Fawad Chaudhry welcomed the women players in a tweet early Wednesday morning.
“We welcome Afghanistan Women football team they arrived at Torkham Border from Afghanistan. The players were in possession of valid Afghanistan Passport, Pakistan visa and were received by Nouman Nadeem of PFF,” Chaudhry tweeted.
Pakistan’s prime minister is a former international cricketing star and sports hero among Pakistanis.
Tens of thousands of Afghan nationals have fled the country since the Taliban seized power, fearing reprisal attacks or repression.

Afghan girls' football team flees to Pakistan

Afghan girls' football team flees to Pakistan - World Soccer Talk

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Farum (Denmark) (AFP) – Khalida Popal hasn’t slept for days. From Denmark where she lives, the former captain of Afghanistan’s women’s football team has worked tirelessly since the fall of Kabul to evacuate the team’s players, who are under threat from the Taliban.
And she isn’t giving up — she’s more determined than ever to continue her fight for the emancipation of girls and women in her native country, where the Taliban do not allow women to play sports.
“We have managed to get 75 people out of Afghanistan, which includes players and their families” who have flown to Australia, Popal tells AFP, sitting in the stands of FC Nordsjaelland, the Danish first division team for which she works as commercial coordinator.
“We are trying to get more players out of Afghanistan. We’ll do everything possible to get our players out.”
Popal, 34, came to Denmark from Afghanistan 10 years ago as a refugee.
She has not slept since Afghanistan fell into the hands of the Taliban, her hands clasped tightly around her phone as she helps organise the evacuation of the players, together with professional players’ union FIFPro among others.
On her voicemail, she listens to desperate pleas for help.
As manager of Afghanistan’s now-splintered national squad, she is the point-person for the players, who are in a state of shock.
Some of them have been threatened by hardline Islamists, others beaten by the Taliban.
“I had to take the lead, together with my team, to help them to get out of Afghanistan. The players were crying, seeking protection, hopeless,” she says.
– Tool for emancipation –
She helped them “to regroup, to keep up hope and not give up. That was the toughest,” she said, describing herself as a “survivor”.
For their safety, she won’t disclose any details about the players still in Afghanistan that they’re trying to get out.
She looks exhausted, but her determination is visible.
For her, football is her passion. But more importantly, she sees it as a tool for the emancipation of Afghan women.
Everything she learned on the pitch — team spirit, determination, perseverence — has come in useful these past few days.
She recalls her own childhood in Afghanistan, one she says was stolen by the Taliban.
“I was not able to go to school, I was not able to participate in any social activities,” she explains.
“We wanted to kind of take revenge and say ‘football is the way that we want to take revenge from the Taliban and the Taliban is our enemy’.”
“That was our strong statement.”
Since the first women’s teams started emerging about 15 years ago, football has grown rapidly in Afghanistan. But it all disappeared overnight when Kabul fell to the Taliban.
“We had around 3,000 to 4,000 women and girls who were registered in the football federation at different levels: grassroots, elite level, and semi-elite level. We had referees, coaches, female coaches,” Popal says.
– ‘Our pride has been taken from us’ –
“After the fall of Kabul, that was all gone. That’s sad,” she says, her voice cracking.
The players’ future is unknown at this point.
They “might play football, but they will not play as players of Afghanistan, because they will not have a country nor a national team.”
The Taliban “have changed the flag of Afghanistan, the flag we felt proud to see and play for.”
“Our pride has been taken from us,” she said.
With US troops set to leave on August 31, Popal, whose parents also live in Denmark, fears her native country will be abandoned and forgotten.
“Once again, people will live in a dark time. And whatever humanitarian crisis and crime happens in Afghanistan, nobody will be able to report about it.”
Especially, she says, since the Taliban have become better at speaking to the international media.
But she will continue to use her own voice.
“As human beings, stand together with me and fight, and be the voice for every woman of Afghanistan,” she pleaded.
“For every woman who is left in the country, every woman who feels betrayed and abandoned.”

Khalida Popal, saving Afghanistan’s women footballers

Khalida Popal, saving Afghanistan’s women footballers - World Soccer Talk

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