Founder and former captain of Afghanistan’s women’s soccer team, Khalida Popal is encouraging female soccer players of her country to burn their jerseys and hide evidence of their sporting achievements to keep themselves safe.
“Take down your photos,” the 34-year old publicly announced. “Destroy all evidence that you ever played. Disappear in every way possible.”
“It is very painful because for all these years, I have been fighting to empower women and girls, to earn the right to wear the jersey. I am now saying, ‘Take them off. Destroy them.”
“Our enemies are outside the window,” Popal told The Washington Post. She believes that mementos for the athletes will not ensure their safety.
According to Popal, her country’s women’s soccer team was intended as a platform to oppose the brutalities of the Taliban.
Playing soccer as a girl was an act of defiance.
“They have used football as a way to personally experience freedom,” Popal explained.
“To build networks, build connections, build self-confidence. To breathe. To be happy.”
Currently based in Copenhagen, Popal now lives with her parents. In 1996, when she was just nine years old, the Taliban seized power and imposed a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
“They took from me the right of education. They took my rights as a girl, as a child,” Popal recounts.
“They have beaten my father. They stoned my mother for working. They took our freedom. We had to flee as refugees and live in a refugee camp.”
In 2001, when the Taliban were toppled, Popal and her parents returned to Afghanistan.
“Then, everything was beautiful and hopeful,” she remembered. “We wanted to represent a picture of a new Afghanistan, with the generations of hopes and dreams.”
At that time, playing soccer and forming a national women’s team was on her agenda. However, those who clung to the Taliban’s beliefs did not think women should play sports.
In a 2017 interview with The Guardian, Popal recalled incidents of having rubbish thrown at her on the street and receiving threatened calls at night. Fearing for her safety, she fled to India before travelling to Denmark. Today, she continues to work as the Afghan team’s general manager, organising matches with other countries and recruiting coaches.
Five years ago, she collaborated with a Danish sportswear company to design a soccer specific hijab.
Minky Worden, director of Human Rights Watch, believes that Afghanistan’s female athletes now face the risk of persecution because they were encouraged to be role models for women’s rights and gender equity by FIFA and the International Olympic Committee.
“There are also dozens of local female and girls club teams for football, cycling, martial arts, and other sports across the country who will need protection, and FIFA should absolutely be prepared to step up,” Worden wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
In a statement, FIFA said the situation in Afghanistan is “very worrying,” adding that it has remained in touch with the Afghanistan Football Federation and is “supporting them through this difficult time.”
Popal wants the rest of the world to rise up and speak out against these injustices.
“My message to every single human being who is watching, witnessing what is happening in Afghanistan is: Raise your voice and ask the question, ‘What about the women of Afghanistan? What about the generation of young people who had so many big dreams? What about them?”
“What you hear from all the politicians is, ‘Our mission has been very successful. We are taking our people out. We are done with Afghanistan.’
“There is no talking about ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ and ‘women’s rights’ – all these words that they entered our country with as promises to the people and the women of Afghanistan.
“They women of Afghanistan feel abandoned by the world. They feel betrayed by the world. And that is painful.”
Image: AP