Afghanistan – Freedom through football: How Khalida Popal fights for women

Anyone who asks Khalida Popal about whether she is still afraid in her life will receive: »My life is still dangerous. Every day in Afghanistan was dangerous. When parents sent their children to school in the morning, they did not know if they were coming back in the afternoon. ”She says without showing a movement. But that’s why not to continue fighting is out of the question for them. Whoever meets this woman from Afghanistan feels her unshakability – and at the same time her fragility.

Threatened in her homeland, persecuted and finally fled, the 37-year-old now lives in Copenhagen. From the stranger, she decisively participated in the fact that after the Taliban took over the takeover of the Taliban, many Afghan footballers were able to leave in August 2021. Almost four years later, a glimmer of hope seems to be on the horizon. Last Friday, the World Association FIFA also announced in addition to the expansion of the Women’s World Cup to 48 teams that the FIFA Council has adopted a strategy for women’s Afghan football. This provides for “the founding of the Afghan refugee team”. FIFA should “organize the company so that the activities can be recorded as soon as possible”, as it was said in a press release.

Popal is actively involved in this process. In Denmark she leads the one founded by her NGO »Girl Power Organisation«that is committed to sports and education for girls in Europe and the Middle East. Regarding the current cooperation with the World Association, she says: “We are proud to be part of the story and to participate in FIFA’s first refugee football team.” Her demand is finally met – that the players distributed in Australia, Canada, Italy, England or Germany will get the football platform back. With Melbourne Victory there is a club that has already provided support in the past, presumably the refugee team will also prepare for the friendly games under FIFA sovereignty on the south coast of Australia.

The return to the field is only the first step for Popal. “We continue to hope that FIFA will change its statutes so that our players are officially recognized as Afghan National National team.” According to FIFA’s valid ethics code, all national associations are obliged not to discriminate anyone because of their gender. The Afghan footballers play the qualification for the 2027 Asia Cup, there is no Afghan selection of women.

As the founder of the former Afghan national team, Khalida Popal is his strongest voice. How it came about, she described in a book published in German: “My wonderful sisters” is called her autobiography-“A story about courage, hope and the Afghan women’s football team”. Many sections leave a shudder. As a liberal girl, she played football with boys in the streets of Kabul in the early 1990s before the not very religious family fled to Pakistan for the first time in 1996. Share her childhood spent in a huge refugee camp.

After stationing the NATO troops, she returned. Then she was 15 – and discovered football as an instrument of liberation. Until then, sport had been a men’s event in Afghanistan. “The norm can always be changed,” says Popal. Under the most adverse circumstances, she managed to inspire more and more women for football. Her drive: “The only place where freedom was felt was the field.” With her persistence, she brought it to the first captain of the national team in 2007 – and in the meantime to the financial director of the National Association. The president was supposedly tired that most men disappeared into the money on this position.

In 2010 she organized a game against NATO soldiers in Kabul, which triggered a nationwide scandal. Some players had to stop, they received death threats. Before that, her teacher had hit her face, now her life was in danger. After a truck raced against her car, shots on her and the police had given an arrest warrant against her, she only remained escaping in 2011.

The violent takeover of the Taliban almost four years ago was a shock for her: »My home was never a safe country for women. But there was a development in music, art and sport that pointed in the right direction. «Now women should only cook, clean, get children and be silent when men determine them. 20 years of work, billions of investments, also felt lost for Popal. It seems like a miracle that she managed to bring around 600 people out of the country in the chaos at the time over her built -in network. The Afghan national women’s national team, but also many young footballers and their families, led them to freedom with the help of men’s right-wing organizations, the FIFPRO player union and the American military.

In retrospect for the August days 2021, she remembers calls from players who whispered on the phone: “If the Taliban knock on my door, I will shoot myself in my head.” The situation for women has deteriorated dramatically under the terrorist regime in their homeland. That is why your plea for equality, freedom and self -determination will not end so quickly.

Khalida Popal, who can no longer play football themselves due to various injuries, wants to illustrate contradictions because the conflict between the connecting power of sport and the toxic power of the patriarchy is constantly being rebuilt. But she also addresses the huge range between cowardice and heroism from responsible organizations. Popal in particular has repeatedly taken on FIFA: »The Afghan Football Association does not allow women to exercise. That is discrimination. The Taliban are not our government. ”She knew about her many contacts that some women of their broken country rebel against the gender apartheid. “Afghanistan is a warning example: if we do not raise our voice, then the people who use our silence will win.”