An Afghan ‘voice for voiceless sisters’

The Afghan women's national soccer team is thriving, in exile, as a special member of an Australian women's soccer league

Khalida Popal, former captain of the Afghan women’s soccer team, sits at the Right To Dream Park in Farum, Denmark, Dec. 21, 2020.Tariq Mikkel Khan/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP/Getty Images/File

September 5, 2022

Last summer, Khalida Popal knew the Taliban were winning in Afghanistan. But she hoped Kabul might hold. As program director of the Afghan women’s national soccer team, she hoped “my girls” had begun to make plans to leave.

It had been 10 years since Ms. Popal herself had fled, physically attacked at gunpoint for daring to play soccer and not be ashamed of it. But this was different. The players who had remained had continued to speak out against the Taliban. Western powers had held them up as a model of a new Afghanistan. Now, “all of a sudden, the enemy was outside their door,” she says.

Ms. Popal’s story could so easily be one more example of the failed promise of equal rights for Afghan women – herself a refugee in Denmark, her team in danger of terrible retribution. 

Instead, she’s writing a dramatically different ending. With her help, all her players escaped Afghanistan safely. Soon, she’ll travel to Australia, where the team is thriving as a special member of an Australian league, supported by one of the country’s biggest professional clubs, Melbourne Victory. And her own Girl Power organization in Denmark is helping female refugees find opportunities and play sports across Europe.

But in that moment some 12 months ago, the women of her team “were crying. They desperately needed help. And I asked myself, what can I do from Denmark?”