‘We felt newly born’: Afghan female footballers’ remarkable escape to UK
“‘We were on the pitch training that day,” says the Afghanistan development team player Fatemah Baratean. “We’d been selected to play in the under-23 Central Asian FA women’s championship, in Tajikistan, then all of a sudden there were explosions and bomb blasts all around, 100 metres from us, smoke, people screaming, mothers running. We didn’t know what was going on.”
The coach told the team it would be their last session, that the Taliban had seized control and they should take one final selfie together there in Herat before everything changed.
“We didn’t want to accept that,” Baratean, 20, says. “We were telling the coach it was not true, it was not happening, this was not the reality. But that was our last moment on our pitch.”
Baratean began playing football in high school. So did three teammates, the 18-year-old Narges Mayeli, Sahar Chamran (19) and captain Sabreyah Nowrozi, 24, who are also speaking to the Guardian from temporary accommodation in the UK, where they arrived on 18 November. Whereas the bulk of the Afghanistan women’s senior national team made it on to some of the last planes to leave Kabul before the Taliban halted evacuation flights, with visas to Australia secured, the development team were stuck.
“We weren’t prepared,” Nowrozi says. “We didn’t estimate that they would suddenly take power. The last 20 years for women and girls in Afghanistan was huge; we had many women actively participating in society – we had doctors, lawyers, judges. A lot of the developments that had happened for women meant we didn’t even think about what would happen if the country collapsed. We didn’t think the country would just give up without a fight.”
Despite the Taliban’s attempts to paint themselves as a changed force to the watching world, the players say the impact was instant. “Everything stopped,” says Baratean. “Education, jobs, everything for girls stopped. We were athletes, we were scared for our future. For the first time we saw the Taliban in the streets. It was really frightening.”
Baratean says it was not common for girls to play football in schools, that even the female teachers did not approve and “because they were against our participation in football it had a negative impact on our grades”, but they had persevered.
“In the first two weeks we started playing outside,” Nowrozi says, looking back to her school days, “and we received threats from the Taliban. There was an announcement from the Taliban that if the people that supported
us playing continued to support us, if something happened to us, then they would be responsible. We didn’t give up, we managed to find a secure and hidden place to continue our game. We moved from being outside on a pitch to a school which was more surrounded.”
The four went to different schools but were selected first to play in a regional team in Herat, then for the national development squad. “When we moved from the school to the stadium it was timed so that no men were allowed to go in and the doors were locked,” Nowrozi says. “When we would leave the stadium, the men who knew that we were footballers were very insulting – there was a lot of verbal harassment, a lot of insults. We ignored it. We could not fight back because there was a risk they could attack us.”
Nowrozi’s father was supportive but pressure to stop came from wider family. Her father was labelled “not a real man” and as “having no honour” because he allowed his daughter to play football. Nowrozi was described as a “bad woman”, as having been “westernised” and worse.
“For me it was the same,” says Mayeli. “At first families were against us, they didn’t let us play football, they told us the community wouldn’t accept that you’re a girl and are playing football. People would talk about you, people would argue with you, they would call you names.”
Buying sports gear in shops was not an option. They relied on coaches and male relatives to take their money and buy equipment. Why did they navigate these extraordinary circumstances to play? “We didn’t have any other social happiness or freedom,” says Baratean.
Nowrozi concurs: “Through football we’ve managed to inspire others, we’ve managed to show women as strong women to the community and to families. We’ve been able to tell them you can still be covered and follow the religion and play football. It’s a positive message.”
When the Taliban took over, the players headed for Kabul airport after contacting Khalida Popal, one of the founders of the women’s national team who was helping players to get out. It took 20 hours for the team and their families to reach the capital, with a driver relative of one of the players paid to organise transport. He hid their documents and ID cards and they were split into smaller groups.
“We were undercover,” says Nowrozi. “Wearing big burqas, hijabs and masks and loads of clothes to hide our identities. On the way it was so scary to see cars exploding, Taliban checkpoints, many accidents. At every Taliban checkpoint we were stopped and we had to work hard to not be identified.”
When they left their homes they felt their chances of getting out were slim and that intensified on arrival outside Kabul airport. “We were being beaten by the Taliban and pushed and forced back, surrounded by gunfire,” says Nowrozi. “But then we had some hope when there was a bus to get us into the airport. We sat in the bus waiting to go, very happy, then there was the explosion [at Abbey Gate which killed more than 180 people] and we had to get off the bus. We lost all hope.
“I was so tired, I had no idea what was next. We were surrounded by family members asking us what was happening. I had no answers. I stood there feeling so helpless.”
Getting out via the airport became impossible as troops sealed the entrances. The development team and their families were forced to bounce from hostel to hostel in the capital, trying to avoid notice while they waited for help from Popal and organisations and individuals who had offered assistance.
Chamran says the hardest part had been convincing their families to leave everything behind and “trust us as their daughters”. Stuck in Kabul, the families were wavering, Nowrozi recalls: “Some were really frightened and frustrated and could not cope with the stress. They started to put a lot of pressure on us to turn back and told us we could live in the home without freedoms and it would be OK. They wanted us to go home and give up on this hopeless fight. We were fighting to keep our families with us.”
Eventually they got word that they had temporary visas from Pakistan but they had to make it to the border and cross. It took seven hours to reach via numerous Taliban checkpoints.
“The Taliban had leashes and were beating people,” says Baratean of their experience at the border. “They were forcing women to cover their faces; if their scarf was a little bit down they were beating us with leashes. The weather was so hot and it was hard to breathe among the crowd. They separated men and women. They were splitting us, they were beating us, there was a moment when they saw a letter from the football federation and started screaming at us, asking if we were footballers.
“We didn’t know what to do, what to answer. We were scared, we said we were and they started screaming: ‘You’re kicked out of our governance, we’ll never accept you, you’re non-Muslims, there’s no space for you in our territories. If you can’t make your way from here you’ll be killed. There’s no way for you to be alive here, we don’t accept you, you have no space in our government.’ We were so scared, we were stuck in the crowd, with a direct threat. We pushed ourselves towards the gate.”
Crossing the border was hard. Some family members got through more quickly than the players but eventually there was relief for everyone in Pakistan. “We felt like a bird that had escaped its cage,” says Nowrozi. “But it was only 50% relief because we didn’t know what was next for us, what the future would look like. We didn’t have a final destination.”
It wasn’t safe in Pakistan, where the Taliban were also present, and they had only short-term visas, but eventually the UK agreed to host the whole development team with their families, 130 people in total.
“The feeling, especially when we landed and we saw the sign saying: ‘Welcome to the UK,’ was a feeling of freedom,” says Nowrozi. “We felt like we were newly born, that we could breathe for the first time. When we got to the accommodation we felt like we were living the first days of our lives.”
Feelings are mixed though. “That is our country, our homeland, where we had a lot of dreams and wishes. We left everything behind. But we do have this mission and promise to ourselves that we want to invest in ourselves, to study, to work, to participate actively and inspire women and girls and be an example for others. We lost everything but we want to empower others and send a message to other women in Afghanistan.”
The Leeds United owner and chairman, Andrea Radrizzani, helped to get the players and their families out and on 1 December the team were invited to train at the club’s academy.
“It was like a child being separated from its mother for several months and finding them again,” says Nowrozi. “We did not want to be separated from the ball. We were running up and down like crazy on the pitch. Just seeing the pitch and having the ball with us, we didn’t want any distractions. After training they brought food, pizza and water and we were saying: ‘We don’t want it.’ We just wanted to play football, we just wanted to stay on the pitch longer. It is difficult to describe it: the best feeling ever.”
Now the bigger journey begins, the rebuilding of their lives. Those supporting them have launched a fundraiser to help their resettlement. Importantly, the players do not want the women left behind to be forgotten.
“Someone has to make sacrifices to make change happen and that’s what the women of Afghanistan are doing,” says Nowrozi. “We will do our part outside of Afghanistan to continue fighting with them and supporting them. We did it when we were in our country and we will continue to do it after.”