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Members of the Afghan women’s team in Australia
Most of the Afghan women’s team live in Australia and are determined to stay together. Photograph: Mike Owen/Getty Images
Most of the Afghan women’s team live in Australia and are determined to stay together. Photograph: Mike Owen/Getty Images

Fifa must provide hope by recognising exiled Afghanistan women’s football team

This article is more than 1 year old
Khalida Popal and

Football has to send a message to the Taliban that women belong at work, in the classroom and on the football pitch

Now that teams, fans and sponsors have left Qatar, Fifa is turning its attention to the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in July. World football’s governing body is hoping for a smoother event, where people can watch matches and “have a moment where we don’t have to think about this”, as its president, Gianni Infantino, said, referring to the uproar over human rights abuses and player protests in Doha.

Perhaps that’s why Fifa has so far ignored pleas from the Afghan women’s national team to officially recognise their players. Since August 2021, the athletes and coaches have been living as refugees after a harrowing escape from their country, where they feared they would be arrested or killed as members of a well-known women’s team in Afghanistan.

They were right to be afraid. The Taliban quickly forbade women and girls from playing sports and, weeks after they came to power, reportedly beheaded a member of the national volleyball team. In November, they banned women from all gyms and parks, even those designated as single-sex spaces.

The Taliban’s war on women goes beyond sports and recreation. They have prohibited adolescent girls from going to school for more than a year and less than two weeks ago kicked women out of all universities across the country. A few days later, they decreed that women were not allowed to work in local and international humanitarian organisations.

As the Taliban erases women from all public life, the Afghan women’s football team players remain symbols of courage and resistance for their country. Most of the team now live in Australia, where they train for an uncertain future. After losing their homes, livelihoods, and many friends and relatives, the women are determined to keep their team together.

The trauma of their escape from Afghanistan and the struggle of adjusting to an unfamiliar country, learning a new language and finding jobs weigh on them. Players have experienced recurring nightmares, trouble sleeping and depression. On the pitch, however, they smile, shout and celebrate every goal with wild enthusiasm.

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What Fifa says

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A Fifa spokesperson said: “Fifa has been closely following the situation of the Afghan football community within the country and abroad, especially the situation of female players.

"The selection of players and teams representing a member association is considered as an internal affair of the member association. Therefore, FIFA does not have the right to officially recognise any team unless it is first recognised by the concerned member association.

However, Fifa will continue to monitor the situation very closely and remain in close contact with the Afghan Football Federation.”

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Though they’ve missed the qualification rounds for this year’s World Cup, the team hope to continue to develop their skills and one day play alongside the world’s best again. Most of all, they want to give hope to women and girls living under Afghanistan’s oppressive, patriarchal regime.

But without formal recognition from Fifa, the team cannot represent their country, compete in professional matches or receive the funding they need to support their players and staff. Despite filing multiple reports with Fifa detailing breaches to the organisation’s code of ethics and citing rules that should allow the women to play in exile, they have received no response.

For the past year, human rights advocates have been calling on world leaders to refuse to negotiate with the Taliban or recognise their government until they end their discrimination against women and let girls go back to school; many countries have agreed to these terms. Aid groups have been working in Afghanistan to support starving families in the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis and economic collapse. People around the world helped evacuate at-risk Afghans and opened their homes to refugees.

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Now, Fifa must use its power to send a message to the Taliban as well: women belong at work, in the classroom and on the football pitch. Afghanistan’s female footballers love their sport and their country. They know what it means to Afghan girls and women living under the Taliban’s oppression to see them in their kits, representing their home. They understand the diplomatic power of sports; that organisations such as Fifa can serve as a check on discrimination against women and defend equality for female athletes.

Fifa’s code of ethics prohibits gender discrimination; its statutes proclaim that the organisation must “strive to promote the protection” of human rights. If it wants to set its own record straight, Fifa can start by recognising the Afghan women’s national team.

Khalida Popal is the founder and former coach of the Afghanistan women’s national football team. Malala Yousafzai is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

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