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The former national football team captain is calling on sport’s governing bodies to ensure female athletes in Afghanistan are safe

“My power is my voice but international governments have real power,” says Khalida Popal, the former Afghanistan women’s team captain. In the wake of the Taliban’s seizure of power last Sunday, Popal and her former international teammates and coaching staff have also called for the sporting community to join them in “being a voice for the voiceless women of Afghanistan”.

They want to secure “protection and support” for the hugely at-risk athletes that have defied the Taliban’s interpretation of sharia law just by stepping on to a pitch and using their voices to advocate for the rights of women to play sport. Popal lives in Denmark after she was forced to flee her home country in 2011 in fear for her life because of her role in establishing the national team. She played a central role in the 2018 exposure of abuse suffered by women’s national team players at the hands of Keramuudin Karim, then president of the Afghanistan football federation, that forced Fifa to investigate and subsequently ban him from office.

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