On foreign shores, football empowers the Afghan women who escaped Taliban clutch

Female athletes, who once aspired to compete at the international level, have resorted to hiding or attempting to flee Afghanistan, a grave situation that could threaten the nation's standing in the sports world.

Several members of Afghanistan's women football team, who recently managed to escape the Taliban's newfound regime in the war-torn land, are holding on to the sport they've nurtured the skill for over the years, to muster strength and courage during these desperate times. Now refugees in alien shores far away from their native land, football remains the only constant that these women hold dear to their hearts, and the flash of hope that perhaps, one day, all will be okay.

Afghan refugees who escaped Herat shortly after the Taliban takeover the city, being administered a coronavirus swab test at the Italian Red Cross camp.  (Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times)

“Football is like food to me,” The New York Times quoted 21-year-old Susan as saying. The former captain of a women's soccer team from Afghanistan has also been the subject of a 2017 documentary – ‘Herat Football Club’. The publication only mentioned the first name of the sportswoman, to protect her identity from potential attack by the Taliban, which have been known to track down their targets.

Susan is one of the three members of the Afghan soccer team who arrived in Rome days after the Taliban laid siege to Herat, all thanks to the help provided by two Italian journalists, a Florence-based NGO, several lawmakers, and officials from Italy. Part of a group of 16 who transited from Herat through a tent camp run by the Italian Red Cross, Susan was also accompanied by her coach and her family on the journey. In a series of interviews with the NYT, Susan mentioned that the fear that she might never be able to play football again under the Taliban regime made her feel as though she was “dead”.

Read the entire interview and more here.

Historically, the Taliban have never been known to be appreciative of women's liberties, but the newly installed regime is looking to forbid women from participating in sports altogether, the conservative outfit's reasoning being that their bodies might be seen. Referring to the sport of cricket, a deputy head of the Taliban's cultural commission told Australian public broadcaster SBS, “It is the media era, and there will be photos and videos, and then people watch it.”

“Islam and the Islamic Emirate do not allow women to play cricket or play the kind of sports where they get exposed,” he added.

The hardline regime's decisions are betraying the group's former commitments that it would be more open towards accepting women's rights, and a Taliban spokesperson even went as far ahead recently as to proclaim that women cannot even play a role in governing a nation; instead, he said, women in Afghanistan should just “give birth”.

Female athletes, who once aspired to compete at the international level, have resorted to hiding or attempting to flee Afghanistan, a grave situation that could threaten the nation's standing in the sports world.