‘I am pretty sure sexual abuse is happening at a global level’
Former Afghan women’s team captain goes on the attack as Fifa investigates harassment allegations
WOMEN’S FOOTBALL REPORTER
Shamila Kohestani, the first captain of the Afghanistan women’s national team, has become the latest to speak on allegations that sexual abuse took place at a training camp for the national team in Jordan last year, and at the federation’s headquarters.
Eleven days ago, Fifa provisionally suspended Keramuudin Karim, the president of the Afghanistan Football Federation, from all football-related activities while investigations are ongoing. It was the first victory for women who claim they were repeatedly ignored by the AFF and the Asian Football Confederation throughout a reporting process littered with what they have described as inadequacies.
Sexual harassment, Kohestani says, “is endemic in Afghan society” and she has no qualms echoing the belief of the head coach of the Afghanistan women’s national team, the American Kelly Lindsey, that similar abuse is happening at other federations.
“This is definitely happening,” says Kohestani. “At the global level, in a lot of Latin American countries, in Middle Eastern countries, or even second world countries, developing countries. This happens very often. I’m pretty sure it’s been happening for a long time.”
Her former team-mates, though, were the first to break their silence, triggering what should have been a worldwide, collective self-reflection.
Inside the country, however, Karim’s suspension has not been universally welcomed. The responses of many Afghan men have been laced with victim-blaming, some calling to expel the women’s committee from the AFF and disband the women’s national team that was the result of 12 years’ work.
“There are conservative people who never liked women being a part of the football federation,” Kohestani says. “There are people who are saying, ‘Women are the poison – remove them to move forward’.
“For them to see a woman running around – they’re like, ‘What are you trying to prove?’ Everyone is saying, ‘If we didn’t have a women’s committee, this would never have happened’.
“Women have to pay the price. We are limiting women’s opportunities just because men misbehave. They’re like, ‘Where in Islam does it say a
‘For them to see a woman running around – they’re like, What are you trying to prove?’