Female athletes flee Afghanistan: wheelchair basketball player arrives in Spain, soccer players in Australia

The evacuation deadline is about to close at Kabul airport but already Nilofar Bayat is living a new life in Spain.

Bayat is a lawyer and captain of the Afghan women’s wheelchair basketball team. She was lucky that her pleas for help were heard just as quickly as the Taliban troops seized the capital city.

She and her husband Ramish, also a wheelchair player, both employees of the International Red Cross in Kabul, were among more than 1,100 Afghans temporarily transferred to Madrid’s Torrejón base within a week.

Both are also war victims, seriously wounded by bombs.

Shortly after the arrival Bayat moved from Madrid to Bilbao where the local basketball club, leader of the División de Honor, offered her a hosting contract.

Her departure and that of her husband had been executed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the request of the highest Spanish sports authorities.

When she was two years old, a Taliban missile hit the courtyard of her home, her little brother was killed, her father was wounded and she suffered a spinal cord injury.

Physically limited, she found in sports the way to move forward in spite of discrimination. As a member of the wheelchair basketball team, she has competed in several Asian Games.

Her goal was the Tokyo Paralympic Games, but she failed to qualify.

Through Spanish journalist friends who immediately spread her case through social networks Bayat managed to contact the Spanish Basketball Federation and ask for help.

“I can’t get out and I know I’m not safe here. The Taliban will kill me. They don’t like women like me. I’m afraid because until 20 years ago they ruled Afghanistan, and that’s when I was wounded and left in wheelchairs,” wrote the athlete.

In Bilbao, Bayat narrated the past days, her odyssey to get to the airport, and thanked all the people who helped them to leave their country. She says she is happy and sad at the same time.

“The Taliban never change and they are more dangerous than they were twenty years ago. I am very sad because the rest of the countries are moving forward and ours is going backwards, especially for the women, who are in danger, cannot work and have no rights.

“I am very worried about her family and the rest of the people who have been left there. Every time I see the news it gives me a headache,” she expresses according to the Iberian press.

Solidarity could continue with another similar case.

Latifa Sakhizadeh, another player of the Afghan wheelchair basketball team, has sent an email to another club in the Basque Country.

“Please help me. My life is not safe. The security in my country is not good, the Taliban will kill me,” she said in her e-mail in English.

With the arrival of the Taliban, Afghan women’s sport is under threat of death after the terror already suffered between 1996 and 2001, with athletes living in hiding and seeking to leave their country, according to various sources.

Australia evacuated more than 50 Afghan female soccer players, family members and sports officials on Wednesday after pressure from leading sports figures, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Around 1,000 people have been evacuated on Australian flights from Kabul and among them were those sportswomen.

A pioneer of Afghan women’s soccer, Khalida Popal, a refugee in Denmark, called the gesture “an important victory”.

Last week Popal had written a message to her compatriots: “Run away from your homes, from neighbors who know you are pioneers of the sport and try to erase your record, delete your social media channels, destroy your photos and hide.”

Popal pushed for the first national women’s team in 2007. She retired from the sport in 2011 to concentrate on promoting women’s soccer in her country, a dream she continues to pursue despite her exile.

There has been no official confirmation on the exact number of female soccer players from Afghanistan on the flight out of Kabul. It is believed that female athletes account for more than half of the number mentioned.

The Taliban takeover is worrying for many Afghan female athletes, such as Zakia Khudadadi, who should have made history when she was on her way to becoming the first woman to represent her country at the Tokyo Paralympics that opened Aug. 24. The International Paralympic Committee revealed on Wednesday that she and Hossain Rasouli, the other member of Afghanistan’s team, were safely out of the country but would not be taking part in the Paralympics in Japan.

Sprinter Kimia Yousofi, Afghanistan’s flag bearer at the Tokyo Olympics, wondered if she would be the first and last woman to play that role for her country. She was eliminated in the 100-meter heats in Tokyo, as she was in Rio in 2016.

Rescue operations for Afghans who have cooperated with U.S. and allied troops, and in the process gained entry to athletes on humanitarian visas, are becoming increasingly complicated as the current Aug. 31 deadline for evacuations approaches.

Planes are flying at full speed to get as many people out as possible in the shortest possible time.

Everyone knows that many people in danger are going to be left behind.

The Taliban have assured that women’s rights will be respected from now on, within the “framework of Islamic law”. So far, few believe them after what they have experienced under their regime.

In the last 20 years, women’s sport had opened a door encouraged by governments, institutions and Non-Governmental Organizations that use sport to drive social change.

“Unfortunately, it is hard not to be pessimistic about the future of Afghan sport. We can think about high-level sport, but the real catastrophe has to do with access to sport for the population, especially girls,” says David Blough, former director of Play International, one such NGO.

The Taliban have announced that they will not allow international troops to control the airport beyond this date and warned that they will not let any more Afghans through to the airport.

There are more men with guns blocking the thousands of people trying to get through the checkpoint. Many athletes who consider themselves threatened are still stranded in Afghanistan.