Since the Taliban takeover, girls and women have been banned from school and work and largely confined to their homes, only allowed to venture out with a male guardian. The final days of the US occupation of Afghanistan were a test of stamina and determination, as armed Taliban fighters menaced locals, firing their weapons into the air as numbers swelled and surged toward checkpoints around the walled airport. Kelly Defina/Getty ImagesĪlmost two years ago to the day, the players were pushing their way through desperate crowds toward the gate at Kabul airport, clutching documents they hoped would confirm their ticket out. The Afghan Women's Team took on Football Empowerment during The Hope Cup on Jin Melbourne, Australia. “Can these Afghan players from diaspora represent Afghanistan at international games? It’s not that difficult. “We have not only the senior women’s national team, we have the youth teams around Europe, and even some of them in the US and Canada,” she said. Now, she’s urging FIFA, the sport’s highest authority, to allow the girls and women to run onto the pitch again to represent Afghanistan. Two years ago, she begged the international community for help to get the team out of Afghanistan, imploring the players to burn their kits, so Taliban fighters wouldn’t target them for daring to play competitive sport, which is now banned for women in the country. “They keep telling me, ‘We feel like we are dreaming … it’s very difficult to believe that we’re actually here,’” said an excited Popal, wearing a bright yellow Australia jersey. Khalida Popal, the team’s founder, flew in from Denmark to meet the players, who now live in Australia after fleeing the threat of death by the Taliban on an Australian military plane as United States troops pulled out in August 2021. Sitting across two rows, not far from the pitch, are players from the exiled Afghan women’s national team, who know what it’s like to represent their country and dream of doing so again – if only they were recognized as a national team by the sport’s governing bodies. Speaking in an interview with DW, she said his departure was a "betrayal" of his country and those who believed in him.Half-time and thousands of tiny cellphone lights are swaying in time to Coldplay’s “A Sky Full of Stars” on a mild winter night at Brisbane Stadium for Australia’s World Cup match against Nigeria. "This public humiliation undercut the authority of the government and showed who the real powers in the country were - the US and the Taliban."įrom May, the Taliban offensive snowballed and, one by one, the provincial capitals fell.įatima Gailani, one of only four women engaged in peace talks with the Taliban in Doha, said they had come "so close" to reaching a peace deal, but Mr Ghani "ruined everything". "The Trump Administration wanted to leave Afghanistan and saw the inclusion of the Afghan government in these talks as only slowing up the process," Dr Shanahan said. Last year, the Trump Administration struck an agreement with the Taliban, rather than the Afghan government, for the US to leave the country in mid-2021. In April, US President Joe Biden announced that he would stick to that plan. "But nobody can 'fix' Afghanistan because there will always be arguments about what 'fixing' it actually means."
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