No ‘future’ for women under Taliban: Former Afghan football player after fleeing

Fanoos Basir, 25, finally managed to flee to France with her parents, after failing to get through the sea of people outside Kabul airport for three consecutive days. When she was able to speak with the Taliban at the venue, she was told that they don’t want to talk to her as she is “a woman.”

Before the United States ended its longest war on Monday with the country’s last troops withdrawing from Afghanistan, several fortunate Afghan citizens were able to get evacuated. One such was the former player in Afghanistan women’s national football team, Fanoos Basir, who escaped her homeland as she saw no future for herself under the Islamist insurgent group Taliban’s rule.

Fanoos Basir had left playing football many years before, but she has since run a club side for women – and even worked as a civil engineer. (REUTERS/Stephane Mahe)

Now, sitting at a reception centre for refugees in France, Basir reminisces of her life back home and the “nightmare” the citizens had of Taliban recapturing Afghanistan. “We had a lot of dreams for our country, for our future, for the future of women in Afghanistan,” she told Reuters after being flown out of Kabul on a French evacuation flight.

Soon after joining a novice Afghan national football team in 2010, Basir commenced to take part in international tournaments overseas – pictures often showed her head uncovered, and smiling with her arms around her teammates. This scenario couldn’t go more against what the Taliban is notoriously known for as in the 90s when they were in power: they had ordered women to stay indoors, barred them from receiving education or work, taking part in sports or even leaving the house without a male chaperon. “There is no future for women… for now,” Basir told Reuters.

Following the sweeping triumph of the insurgents after they regained control over Kabul on August 15, and the former President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani and nearly all of his aides fleeing the country, Afghans have been desperately trying to escape. The Afghan national football team has been shut down, and a vast majority of the contingent has been evacuated via an Australian military aircraft.

Watch | 'Saw Taliban around my home': How Afghan women's basketball star escaped

Earlier, Khalida Popal, the former Afghan women’s football team captain had urged her teammates to burn their kits, delete any trace of their social media accounts, and erase their public identities for the sake of their safety. In a video interview, Popal, now based in Copenhagen, said that during their two-decades-long reign, the Taliban had killed, raped and stoned women to death and female footballers were scared what their future may be like. “[It’s] painful for me, for someone as an activist who stood up and did everything possible to achieve and earn that identity as a women's national team player,” the co-founder of the Afghan women's football league added to Reuters.

Although Basir had left playing the sport many years before, she has since run a club side for women – and even worked as a civil engineer. The 25-year-old told Reuters that after the militant group took over Kabul, she refrained from leaving her house for days – wearing a burqa when she did finally decide to venture out.

With no possibility of a woman’s sport team in Afghanistan at the moment, Basir said that she had to quit her job as an engineer as well. Addressing various reports regarding the insurgents imposing their old diktats on women not leaving the house without a male relative, she said that it would have meant bringing her father or brother to work every day.

As glimpses of the old life under Taliban began coming back, Basir decided to leave Afghanistan with her frail parents.

Evacuation battle

It is no novelty that the scenes outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport – both before and after the deadly suicide attacks by the ISIS-K, were dangerous. Basir failed to get through the enormous queue and crowds of people outside the airport for three days in a row. In her interview with Reuters, she even described seeing Taliban fighters firing guns and beating people with sticks.

When she got a chance to speak with one of the militant group’s representatives, she was told, “You are a woman, we do not want to talk with you.”

The former Afghan women's team footballer had given up hope to escape the Taliban regime, and that’s when she and her family heard the French embassy had organised buses to pick up eligible people for evacuation. Basir and her parents were able to reach the Kabul airport, and eventually fly out.

Future plans

Basir and her parents are undergoing Covid-19 quarantine at the reception centre for refugees – about 450km west of Paris. She told Reuters that she hopes to eventually work as a civil engineer in her new home, although she said that leaving Afghanistan, “[their] dreams. Everything is so hard for everyone.” “Now, we will start from zero,” she was quoted as saying.