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THE HEAVY TOLL OF ACHIEVING ‘SPORT FOR ALL’ IN AFGHANISTAN INTERVIEW BY DR NATALIE GALEA KHALIDA POPAL Khalida Popal is Director of Afghanistan Women’s Football Team, founder and director of Girl Power, a nonprofit grassroots women sports entity, passionate about giving immigrant and refugee women and girls access to sports and is Commercial Coordinator at FC Nordsjaelland. Khalida is on Twitter @khalida_popal
Khalida Popal used the power of sport to reinstate and strengthen women’s human rights to non-discrimination and equality. Growing up in Afghanistan at a time when women had little to no human rights, Popal saw playing football as a way to stand up for her human rights as a woman. In 2007, she established the Afghanistan football league in the face of enormous community opposition. Until 2001, the Taliban had stopped women from playing sport in Afghanistan.
“I saw football as a powerful tool to provoke women’s rights, because football is known as a man’s game,” Popal said. “When women play football in Afghanistan, it sends out a clear message to the men and women of my country that women have rights over their bodies and are free to do what they want with their bodies. This is about more than football; this is about basic human rights.” Her other motivation to establish a women’s football competition was to counter the historical view of her homeland. “The media portrays a negative picture of Afghanistan, men with guns and women with burka. I wanted to show the world that there are a group of people who want peace, who love peace and who want a free life,” said Popal. Popal captained the national team and moved into an administrative role as the programme director. She became the first woman to work for the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF). While the local community’s resistance to the women’s football team lessened, in her new role Popal was sexually harassed and received numerous death threats. In 2011 she fled Afghanistan and sought asylum in Denmark, yet she remained part of the women’s team. In April 2018 at a training camp in Jordan with other international teams, Afghanistan based team members
HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER | VOLUME 29: ISSUE 2 – AUGUST 2020
