Archdeacon
Female athletes once again symbolic of Afghans’ plight, and the most prominent is already missing.
I first met Afghan teenagers Robina Muqimyar and Friba Rezayee at the Athletes Village a few days before they were to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
When Rezayee would step onto the judo mat and then, two days later, when Muqimyar would line up for the start of the 100-meter dash at Spyros Louis Olympic Stadium, they would become the first women from Afghanistan to compete in the Olympics.
But as we sat there and talked through an interpreter, I quickly learned they would not be the first Afghan women to be the center of attention in a major sporting arena.
When the oppressive Taliban regime ruled Afghanistan from 1996 through 2001, it imposed some of the most unyielding and deadly gender apartheid in the word. Fanatical misogynists, they banished, brutalized and killed women and girls.
“They made Kabul Stadium an execution grounds,” explained Afghan sports official Sayed MahmoodZia Dashti. “One person was killed there every week. Women
were beaten. Two or three people would have their hands and feet cut off. One time, two women were hung from the goal posts during a football (soccer) match.”
In 1999, a mother of seven was shot as 30,000 people watched.
According to Stig Traavik, a Norwegian coach and former Olympian who was advising the fledgling Afghan team, the transgressions were imaginary: “Maybe someone wore the wrong color socks or they walked too quickly or their shoes squeaked.”
According to Taliban rules, women weren’t allowed to walk the streets unless accompanied by a male relative. They had to be covered head to foot in a burqa and scarf. Formal education was forbidden for them. So was sports. Photography, TV and most music were banned for all.
“During the Taliban women had to stay in their homes like prisoners,” Muqimyar said.
When the U.S, took control from the Taliban in 2002, the world suddenly opened up for Afghan women. They were prompted to join every aspect of public life. They studied in universities, joined the military, ran businesses, became politicians — in fact, early this year 27% of the posts in the national parliament were held by women — and they became athletes of every stripe.
They played cricket, cycled, climbed, rode skateboards and did martial arts.
But the first two athletes — the standard bearers — were Muqimyar and Rezayee.
Although Muqimyar knew she was 3 and 4 seconds behind the best sprinters, her goal was to stand alongside the world champion at the starting line. It would be the first time the women of Afghanistan had the same footing with women from everywhere else.
“I want the women at home to know the way is open for them in the world of sport,” she said. “I want them to see they can get what they want in life.”
She became a symbol against oppression and she didn’t wilt in the spotlight.
“I learned from the Taliban how to be oppressed,” she told the BBC. “Now I will teach people how to defend themselves against them.”
Running in long pants, a T-shirt and a head scarf, she clocked a 14.14 in her opening heat, finishing seventh among eight sprinters, and didn’t advance. She competed again at the Beijing Games in 2008 and in her career ran in 30 international races.
She went on to become vice president of the Afghan Olympic Committee and in 2019 — using her family name, Robina Jalali — was elected to the Afghan parliament and committed herself to women’s rights.
And then all of a sudden the Taliban surged back into power as the U.S, prepared to pull out of the country by Aug. 31.
Instantly, women like her became a target.
‘I wanted to do the same thing’
Growing up under Taliban rule, Muqimyar lived in a mud hut with 15 relatives in Kabul and had never even heard of the Olympics.
Back then, Rezayee and her family fled to a Pakistan refugee camp. It was there that she fell in love with boxing.
She told of watching Mike Tyson fight on the flickering screen of an old, communal TV. And she was especially inspired by Laila Ali.
“I fell in love with how powerful she was,” she said. “I wanted to do the same thing.”
But when she couldn’t find women sparring partners, she switched to judo.
Meanwhile, 11 months before the Athens Games, Olympic volunteers held playground tryouts in Afghan schools hoping to find a few athletes to represent the nation. Clothed head to foot and running barefoot, Muqimyar impressed them with her enthusiasm more than her speed.
But critics remained. A mullah in Kabul condemned her Olympics participation, saying she would be “flaunting” herself in front of thousands of non-Muslims. The head of the Supreme Court said sports corrupted youth.
Undaunted, the 17-yearold Muqimyar countered that sports was acceptable in Islam: “It says a healthy woman is a healthy mother.”
At the opening ceremony, athletes of other nations flocked to Muqimyar and Rezayee.
Although she lost to a fourtime world champion in her opening bout, Rezayee later told CNN her father had been amazed when he saw her on TV.
He said it was like seeing her take the first steps on the moon.
But once she got back home, she was repeatedly threatened and went into hiding.
And a year later her sister, Shaima Rezayee — a popular music presenter on an MTV-style show that was constantly targeted by Islamic clerics — was fatally shot outside the TV station.
In 2008 another woman track athlete headed to the
Beijing Games was repeatedly threatened, so she fled to Norway and sought asylum. Muqimyar became a last-minute fill in and though she finished last in her heat, she was No. 1 in most women’s hearts back home.
Three years later Rezayee fled to Canada, where she has launched a pair of nonprofit organizations aimed at helping Afghan women, especially athletes.
Muqimyar stayed in Afghanistan and entered politics and became an iconic figure with her image painted on walls and signs.
‘My country is falling apart’
When the Taliban took over this time, their spokesmen claimed they were different. That they would “respect women’s rights” and “permit” them to be educated and work — albeit under Sharia law.
Rezayee told a CNN reporter she believes the Taliban is unchanged when it comes to women.
In July, Reuters reported insurgents marched into a Kandahar bank and ordered the nine women working there to leave, telling them male relatives would take their place.
Just recently, the Taliban told all working women to stay home from their jobs because their soldiers weren’t trained to deal with them.
In some provinces there are reports of Taliban taking away prepubescent and adolescent girls to be their child brides.
This spring three women journalists were murdered and last week a popular folk singer was pulled from his home and shot dead. Women athletes are being targeted. Most have gone into hiding and many are pleading to be rescued and given asylum.
Sprinter Kamia Yousufi, the flagbearer for Afghanistan at the recent Tokyo Games who ran in long black pants, long-sleeved black shirt and a black hijab, fled to Iran after the competition.
Australian athletes just helped get 50 women athletes out of Afghanistan and the U.S. women’s Olympic soccer team is lobbying Congress to help get the Afghan women’s national team out.
Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghan soccer team, told Reuters she has advised athletes to burn their national uniforms and wipe all trace of themselves off social media.
Rezayee told CNN: “Recently the Afghan female athletes visited the dojo. They hugged. They also kissed the mats because this was the last time they were going to see them. That was their last day of freedom.”
“My country is falling apart,” Popal said on LinkedIn. “Dreams are fading and dreamers are hopeless.”
That point has become especially clear with the 35-year-old Muqimyar, who has not been seen or heard from since mid-August.
Sadly, she now has become another symbol of Afghan women.