Khalida Popal took part in a frank discussion with the Guardian about the city that gave life to the world’s first national women’s team and the ‘traumatising’ impact of their fall from grace
Former Afghan football captain says Taliban are ‘surrounded’ by areas that are ‘more important’ than their influence
Khalida Popal, the Afghan women’s football captain who can’t return to her home country because of the Taliban, has admitted she has little hope that the group will ever be defeated.
In an interview with the Guardian, the 48-year-old said of her two daughters: “I don’t want them to see a future so bad that they think it is right to return to the Taliban.”
But, asked if the Afghan government could defeat the Islamist group, Popal said: “I don’t think the government can, or should, or ever. When you consider the Taliban are in 80% of Afghanistan, and the other 20%, that’s not even a big chunk. Even in a situation of total defeat, we still have our movement and traditions that they won’t change … I think [the Taliban] have to be dealt with at the local level and it is not for the outside to tell them what to do. It is their decision.
“Afghanistan is surrounded, from one corner to another, by areas that are more important than the Taliban.”
Popal, who can’t return to Kabul for security reasons but is expected to start training with an Italian club next year, was the face of an ambitious national women’s football league when the Taliban began their descent into international disgrace in 1996.
She was also president of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) from 2005 to 2008. When her international career was ended in 2012, her country had been ranked in the top 100 of the world in 2000-2004. Its largest clubs, those founded by women and women from different ethnicities, inspired the 2006-2009 Alba Cup and it was hoped women’s football could be taken to the grassroots.
Khalida Popal, pictured in June 2015, was the face of an ambitious national women’s football league when the Taliban began their descent into international disgrace in 1996. Photograph: Reuters
But the decade that followed was a time of severe turbulence. Violence and social unrest peaked when the Taliban consolidated their grip, kicking out footballers for numerous crimes, including smoking in and out of the stadium and singing songs from the west.
Popal went on to work as an adviser to the AFF and said she feared giving another interview “after talking to you today”.
“I don’t talk about the past. People said they like my story because it shows that if it works for women in the past, it can also work for the future. That is how important it is,” she said.
But one critic summed up Popal’s role in the country’s political and social history best: “Popal broke the taboo. She has shown that women could be in charge of the regime, that all women could get a chance to pursue their interests. Now many people want a Popal generation – she won’t be the last, but her example will certainly set an example for many more to follow.”
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Only now is the Afghan government taking steps to reverse the gains of Popal’s generation. Women’s education rates are climbing, but campaigners say they have slipped since the end of the Taliban. The Taliban, who banned women from school and work and executed women who flouted their rules, do not have the full support of the government.
“A lot of people were punished [by the Taliban], so it is not normal, for a small group of people, to force so many others to do something,” Popal said.
“Some people who were sentenced to prison didn’t even get a retrial, so there are human rights violations in the country that still aren’t resolved. So I think the right to live a full life is what is important … freedom means that you can live without humiliation, in peace.”