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June 21, 2024
In recognition of yesterday’s World Refugee Day, we’re excited to share that Khalida Popal, founder of the Girl Power Organisation – a Sport Together Fund delivered by Beyond Sport Grantee Partner – has released a gripping memoir detailing a story of survival, sisterhood with the Afghan women’s national football team and the fight for feminism in the age of the Taliban. My Beautiful Sisters: A Story of Courage, Hope and the Afghan Women’s Football Team was published yesterday.
Born in Afghanistan, Popal was a former captain of the Afghan women’s national football team. During this time, the Taliban banned women from playing sports and entering competitions. As success of the team grew, she became a higher-profile target for anti-feminist and anti-women groups. In 2011, she received numerous death threats and decided to leave the country, eventually seeking asylum in Denmark.
Popal founded Girl Power in 2014 based on her experiences in refugee centers. She realized that sports activities could instil new energy and life in refugee women, providing networking opportunities, a sense of belonging and a diversion from their challenging situations. Her non-profit uses sport and education programs to empower and unify women and girls.
Now, the dedicated women’s rights activist and advocate for inclusion and the integration of refugees has shared a “riveting, heart-wrenching and incredibly important” story. “My Beautiful Sisters shows us the value of raising our voices in the face of injustice, the ability of sport to unite us all and the strength we have when we stand together. This is an inspirational story for girls and women everywhere, but essential reading for everyone,” said Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from the prologue of the captivating memoir:
Melbourne, August 2023
The same images are always there, waiting for the moment when I close my eyes. A knife slicing into a ball. Men laughing, their faces hateful. A helicopter’s blades spinning, dragging smoke behind them. Blood dripping slowly into the dust. The silhouette of a girl twisting in flames.
‘Khalida?’ I open my eyes. I nod to the woman who is organising the event and take a breath. It is the day before the Women’s World Cup Final in Sydney, and I am standing to the edge of the small indoor pitch at the back of the Ultra Football store in Melbourne. In front of me are members of what used to be the Afghanistan women’s national team. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it’s a miracle any of us are here to tell our story. Tomorrow, the world will be watching as the best women’s national football team in the world is crowned. But not every team was able to compete.
The Afghanistan women’s team remains unrecognised by FIFA, football’s global governing body. The irony that the World Cup is in Australia this year, where the majority of the Afghanistan women’s team fled to as refugees when the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, immediately banning all women’s sport, is not lost on anyone.
Nor is the fact that the men’s team is recognised and continues to compete. I have been flown here from Denmark, where I have been living in exile from Afghanistan for more than ten years, by Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning education activist. I did not need to explain to her what it is like to live as a woman under a repressive regime. What happens when the men to whom you have become an annoyance decide to swat you like a fly. So here I am, to be reunited with my sisters and introduce her to them. To help tell the story of the team to anyone who will listen. But where does the story begin?
We encourage you to read this inspirational story! Click here to get your copy.
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