100 Afghan women football players, their families evacuated from Afghanistan to Qatar

As many as 100 women footballers, including members of the national football team, were evacuated from Afghanistan, which is under the Taliban, on Thursday on a flight to Doha, the Qatari government said.

“Around 100 footballers & their families including female players are on board,” Lolwah Al-Khater, Qatar’s assistant foreign minister, said in a tweet.

Sky Sports News reported that the group includes at least 20 national women’s team footballers. The players along with other evacuees were taken to a compound to undergo coronavirus testing. It is unclear how long they will stay in Qatar.

FIFA, the football’s world governing body, has been working closely with the Qatar government to coordinate the evacuation of players from Afghanistan. FIFPRO, the international players’ union, in August helped secure seats on a flight out of Kabul for players from the Afghanistan women’s national team. After the Afghan government fell in August and the Taliban took back control of Kabul after 20 years, concerns were raised for the safety of women athletes.

Khalida Popal, the former Afghan women’s football team captain, even urged players still in Afghanistan to burn their sports gear and delete their social media accounts to avoid reprisals from the Taliban regime. Many of the country’s female footballers have gone into hiding since the Taliban’s takeover.

In August soon after the Taliban took over the country, a former player in the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team Fanoos Basir fled and said there was no future for her under the Taliban rule. “We had lots of dreams for our country, for our future, for the future of women in Afghanistan. This was our nightmare, that the Taliban would come and capture all of Afghanistan. There is no future for women… for now,” she told Reuters outside the reception centre, where she arrived after being evacuated from Kabul on a French-organised flight.

Last month, women players from Afghanistan’s junior national team crossed the border into Pakistan. The girls spent weeks in hiding amid fears of a crackdown on women’s rights by the Taliban, according to reports.

The last time the Taliban ruled over Afghanistan, women were barred from taking part in sport, or from working outside the home, and had to cover themselves from head to toe when in public. The Islamist movement was ousted in the US-led invasion in 2001, but 20 years later has taken power again.