Because sport has been banned for women in Afghanistan since the Taliban came to power, many female athletes are in danger. Now some female soccer players managed to escape.
Lahore – With the help of the Pakistan Football Association and several activists, almost 80 Afghan football players and their relatives have managed to leave Afghanistan across the Pakistani border in the past few days. This is reported by the British newspaper The Guardian. Because of a sports ban for women, the players in their homeland are threatened with persecution by the new rulers.
Among the football players who fled were Afghan national players and athletes from the youth team as well as members of the team from Herat, which won the Afghan championship in 2020. The players from Herat fled to the Afghan capital Kabul after fire attacks on several houses and the capture of some of their family members by the Taliban.
Afghanistan: Former team captain Khalida Popal organized escape from the Taliban
The Guardian report refers to the testimony of former Afghan team captain Khalida Popal, who was involved in a rescue operation last month. At that time, between 100 and 200 young women were rescued from the country during the evacuation by airlift. In a tweet on Wednesday night (September 15, 2021), she announced that 79 young women and some relatives had managed to escape.
According to their accounts, individual male members of the girls and women were captured by the Taliban during the flight. It was the most difficult thing to tell the players not to look back and to get them across the border despite the uncertainty about the whereabouts of brothers and fathers, the 34-year-old told the Guardian.
Soccer players are fleeing Afghanistan: Refugees have been in Lahore since Wednesday morning
The rescue operation was supported not only by the Pakistan Football Association, at whose office in Lahore the players and their relatives arrived on Wednesday morning, but also by the human rights group RokiT Foundation. Its managing director Siu-Anne Marie Gill said of the rescue mission: “Waiting for the news that the group has reached the border after being stuck in no man’s land for hours: these were some of the toughest and most emotional hours of my life.”
The group also owes the fact that the escape was successful to the former Vice President of the Pakistani Football Association, Sardar Naveed, and to the Pakistani embassy, which provided visas for the refugees. “Our whole team waited in silence for the news from the group that everyone was safe,” Gill described the mood during the rescue operation to the British newspaper: “I admire these girls and women and their families for their courage and strength for fight their lives. That gave us all strength. “(Ska)
