Escape from the Taliban: The past, present and future of Afghan women’s football
Khalida Popal and Haley Carter shared an exhilarating account on how Afghan women’s football has taken a bright turn from dark regime of oppression, death-threats and sexual discrimination in an exclusive interview with Srinwantu Dey.
The sight of a football stadium is often not a very pleasing one for the Afghans. During the Taliban reign, the football stadium in Kabul (Ghazi Stadium) became the auditorium for execution and institutionalized torture. In the late 90s, when the football world was busy savouring the magic of Gabriel Batistuta or Dennis Bergkamp in the penalty-box, the Afghans experienced the disturbing and brutal sights of beheading near the penalty spots in Kabul football stadium where the victims were pushed to the ground by armed Taliban soldiers, tied at the elbow behind their backs in front of thousands of crowds and later executed in public accompanied by Quaranic verses. The crowd was told that it was virtuous to attend an execution.
Even after the Taliban reign was over, the situation was far from being normal. It remained a state where violence and discrimination were institutionalized, which left a deep scar to the society, and the economy scarcely exists.
“Now nobody comes here in the evening, even we don’t go inside,” says Nabeel Qari, a young guard at the entrance to the stadium, to Reuters back in 2008. “Everyone believes the place is haunted, that the souls of the dead people are not at rest even now.”
There is a common belief that so much blood has been spilled on the football field and seeped into the soil below that a few attempts to grow grass there failed. Then the Afghan government redeveloped the stadium and the soil was dug up to a depth of half a meter and replaced.
The groundman Muhammad Nasim told to the media, “We put a new layer of soil so that players would not be stepping on to the blood of so many people.”
Apart from that, the life of women had become miserable in Afghanistan. Things did not improve much after the new era had begun. The discrimination was still very strong. People were still struggling to leave behind the curses of the most oppressive regime of mankind. Sports, as a whole, suffered a lot and not to mention the sporting careers of women, which reached an abysmal state.
Khalida Popal, former Afghanistan women’s team captain, spoke to Goalden Times about her views on the state of Afghanistan women’s football. She is also the former head of the women’s football committee, finance committee of the Afghan Football Federation (AFF),the founder of Girl Power Organization, program and event director of Afghanistan women’s football committee. Simultaneously, she is working for Hummel International as a project coordinator in Denmark. The journey to here was not easy for Khalida.
Khalida began playing football when she was still a minor at the era when the Taliban government had banned women from participating in sports or attending games. She was instrumental behind formation of the first Afghan women’s national team back in 2007 along with four other team-mates. The journey was not easy as playing any sort of sports by women was still a taboo in the society and it was under heavy scrutiny by the fundamentalists and could lead to strict punishments. Khalida faced similar situations but was able to secretly practice the game she loves, thanks to her mother. Her mother, being a sports teacher, always encouraged and motivated her to play football even under harsh social conditions.
Khalida Popal, Khalida Popal, former Afghanistan women’s team captain, former head of the women’s football committee, finance committee of the Afghan Football Federation (AFF),the founder of Girl Power Organization, program and event director of Afghanistan women’s football committee. [Source: ulyces.co]“She was the one who used to motivate other girls in a country like Afghanistan where women have less participation in a male dominated country. She wanted all women to have participation equally and actively”, Khalida told Goalden Times about her mother. “My mother always wanted to give example to the other families to encourage their daughters to play. If it is risky or dangerous to play, she wouldn’t let her own daughters play. She argued to other parents and convinced playing football is nothing like against the culture or religion”
Afghanistan is a country where not only the men are against freedom of women, even a vast majority of women are against it too. For many years in Afghanistan, women were not permitted to play outdoor games. Khalida faced a lot of obstacles too during her school days when she started playing football. Once, a group of men invaded their game, harassed and threatened them by tugging their skirts. Madina Azizi, one of the footballers of current national team, faced severe criticism and insults from her school teacher for her sporting attires and was branded as a prostitute by them. Being a woman in Afghan society is a challenging task itself, let alone playing football.
“By the time when I started playing football and became leader of the national team and when I started talking more directly about encouraging woman to stand for their rights, in a male dominated country its always never taken as a good sign. They don’t encourage a woman talking about rights for another woman, they don’t want women to be strong”, Khalida recalled. “That’s the reason I faced so many problems and death-threats and I had to flee from the country in order to save my voice. I didn’t want my voice to be shut, it was very important for me to save it so that I can stand up for the rest.”
“By the time when I started playing football and became leader of the national team and when I started talking more directly about encouraging woman to stand for their rights, in a male dominated country its always never taken as a good sign. They don’t encourage a woman talking about rights for another woman, they don’t want women to be strong”, Khalida recalled. “That’s the reason I faced so many problems and death-threats and I had to flee from the country in order to save my voice. I didn’t want my voice to be shut, it was very important for me to save it so that I can stand up for the rest.”
Khalida fled from her country back in April, 2010 to save her life. The life as a refugee was never easy for Khalida. She had to leave her country with the help of some good people to save her life. After that she was underground in India for a significant time and later took shelter in Denmark. After reaching Denmark she initially found herself under severe depression during her life in an asylum centre. Fortunately, a helpful Danish family held her hands to help her overcome the sorroy state.
Khalida was not the only one who suffered from this kind of terrible crisis. Hosna Korishi, one of the current national team footballers, had to escape from Kabul as her father was an art-painter and painting was strictly banned during the Taliban regime. Their life became extremely dangerous and she had to leave the country with her parents to Netherlands after going through a lot of hardship. Roya Noori, another 20-year-old, who used to train sports in orphanages faced similar death threats, often from her own relatives, for her interests in football. She escaped to Sweden and is living there as a refugee since 2011.
“Being a refugee is something you can never be happy about, it’s very stressful. You are out of your country, you don’t have any country. The people doesn’t know what is going to happen to them in future. There was a completely new culture, new languages, everything was new. We lost our identities.”, Khalida described in details. “Losing identity is a very big thing. It is very painful. Though these are better countries with better amenities where you get more freedom as a woman, but you will start missing everything, your home, your families. Football kept me back in the fight to earn my lost identity.”
The situation started to improvewhen Hummel International, a sportswear company based in Denmark, came out to help them get out of the situation.
Khalida expressed her gratitude towards them, “That’s more than a company to me – who knew about my fights, my activities and provided support of all means.”
The Afghan WNT is ready to rock the SAFF Women’s championship 2016.Currently Hummel International is the sponsor for Afghanistan Women’s National team and has invested for the development of women’s football in the war-wretched country. They also have helped massively to form the domestic football league for women in Afghanistan in pursuit of developing more talents organically and to encourage more women to play football professionally. In an oppressed and culturally conservative country like Afghanistan, a domestic football league only for women is no less than a ground-breaking idea.
Haley Carter, the goalkeeping coach of Afghan women’s team told Goalden Times, “That’s the goal for every national team. Afghanistan is no exception as well.”
Haley, an ex-marine, who has grown up in Houston, USA as a professional football player for Houston Dash joined as the goalkeeping coach for Afghanistan women’s national team after her retirement. She sounded very confident about the preparation of her team for the upcoming SAFF Women’s Championship, 2016 to be held in India in a few days. They have chosen the team carefully and have been practicing hard in USA before the tournament, aiming for a major success.
“Players have worked incredibly hard since their time of selection, this is a culminating event of the year and sort of a new beginning to revamp the project and get more attractions worldwide. This is a program of diversity. We have players who speaks eight different languages coming from all over the world. We coach virtually, it can be relatively difficult. We don’t have resources to put together everything all at a time. The only competitive advantage we have is nobody knows us.”
Incidentally, the Afghan team has been drawn in a relatively tougher group with India and Bangladesh.
Haley added, “My main goal and Kelly’s (Kelly Lindsey, head Coach, Afghanistan women’s national team) main goal is to get these girls understand that they need to be confident during the game. I am excited to see how we can play or how we can compete. I don’t want to be overconfident by any means, but I want them to compete with a sense of purpose. Being successful in SAFF is a big deal in Afghanistan. Nationalism trumps sexism. Nothing better than international level success. If we can achieve some success people will stop questioning on why the girls are playing a man’s game and start accepting us gradually. And it is vital for the success of the program too.”
“Being successful in SAFF is a big deal in Afghanistan. Nationalism trumps sexism. Nothing better than international level success. If we can achieve some success people will stop questioning on why the girls are playing a man’s game and start accepting us gradually. And it is vital for the success of the program too.”
The current Afghan team has players of Afghan origin from seven different countries apart from Afghanistan —USA, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Germany who are refugees from Afghanistan and fighting for their identity and to empower the women in Afghanistan who are victims of oppression.
Little Afghan girl holding a goal sign at Roshan Afghan Premier League (RAPL) in Kabul (Source: Twitter)Khalida’s determination has gradually transformed the society. She told, “Now if we talk to women or even men, they are very optimistic about the future of women’s football in general. We hope to get more encouragement and more support which will eventually go directly to the common women’s welfare and bring a permanent change.”
The movement created by Khalida and team has contributed significant changes to the country. War and oppression destroyed a lot, but this group of brave women wanted to change the culture for good, if not entirely but a part of it having football as their vehicle. Her main focus is to bring pride to the country and she believes that women can do the same. The idea is to become a true voice to the women to empower them to come out from the dark era. The current national team, which consists of players of Afghan origin from different backgrounds and different countries, is shaped to form a voice for those women who are inside the country with the message that you are not alone.
The Afghan women team, led by captain Shabnam Mobarez, are ready to take on the Asian heavyweights in the upcoming SAFF championship starting from December 26th. They will be facing mighty India on 27th December and Bangladesh on 29th in Siliguri, India. Though we do not expect them to pull off major upsets in the tournament, but we can always expect an impeccable fight from this group of brave women who have crossed many obstacles to reach here. Kudos and best of luck to the team.
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About Srinwantu Dey
Srinwantu Dey lives in Chicago who takes football journalism seriously under the huge influence of Eduardo Galeano. He is keenly interested in various creative ways of story-telling on the beautiful game, its diverse socio-cultural and humanitarian appeal. Srinwantu habitually travels, documents and visually captures how football explains different societies and ethnicities. He can be reached at @SrinwantuDey.
