High-profile sportswomen in Afghanistan have been urged to wipe their social media presence and in some cases burn their kit as supporters scramble to protect them from the Taliban.
Speaking from Copenhagen, Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghanistan women’s football team, said female players should take urgent steps to remove all trace of their sporting history.
“Today I’m calling them and telling them, take down their names, remove their identities, take down their photos for their safety. Even I’m telling them to burn down or get rid of your national team uniform,” she told Reuters.
“And that is 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. To earn that badge on the chest, to have the right to play and represent our country, how much we were proud.”
A source close to the country’s cycling federation echoed the advice, saying female members had been told to stay at home and avoid posting on social media at all cost.
“At the moment [they are] safe but it is my expectation that within some months, like one or two months, I’m sure that nobody can guarantee their life. These are real dangers,” the source said. “The freedoms they had to ride a bike will be impossible … They are shocked and they are afraid.”
The speed with which the Taliban had taken over control of Afghanistan had scuppered any chance the women might have had to flee, the source added. “Everything changed in 48 hours. Nobody was able to escape. If it [had been] a week or something, we would have sent them to neighbouring countries but it all happened on the same day, the airport is closed, everywhere you see terrorists with guns.”
The worries came as some members of a girls’ robotics team – Afghanistan’s first – arrived in Qatar after leaving Kabul on a commercial flight, according to a statement on Wednesday by the team’s founder, the Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob.
Known as the Afghan Dreamers, the team from Herat in western Afghanistan range in age from 12 to 18. Last year, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, they built a prototype for a ventilator with used car parts.
Mahboob said that while some of the girls had gone to Qatar to continue their education, other members had stayed in Afghanistan. “The Taliban have promised to allow girls to be educated to whatever extent allowed by Sharia law,” she told the New York Times. “We will have to wait and see to what that means.”
When the Taliban were in power between 1996 and 2001, women were not allowed to work and girls were barred from going to school, let alone playing sport. Women had to wear burqas to go out, and then only when escorted by a male relative.
Popal said the footballers she had spoken to were “so afraid. They are worried, they are scared, not only the players, but also the activists ... they have nobody to go to, to seek protection, to ask for help if they are in danger. They are afraid that any time the door will be knocked.”
Female cyclists, who have faced physical attacks and verbal slurs even in more recent years, spoke to the Guardian last month about their fears that a Taliban takeover would force them off their bikes for good.
“I really pray for the country to be a safe place for a woman like us, especially [for us to be able] to ride bikes on the streets,” said one. “But I’m quite sure that the Taliban groups, the [Islamic State] and all of them, will never allow women to even study, to work, to have a job. So how is it possible they will let us do biking? I’m quite sure that they will never allow us; they will just shoot us.”
A spokesperson for Fifa said the world football body shared “concern and sympathy with all those affected by the evolving situation. We are in contact with the Afghanistan football federation, and other stakeholders, and will continue to monitor the local situation and to offer our support in the weeks and months to come.”
The(UCI) was approached for comment.