Banned from football at home, Afghan women’s team reunite 8,000 miles away

The changing room is busy with footballers going through their pre-match routines. Some stretch and tighten their boots, others embrace.

“Be strong as always because we are representing Afghan women,” says midfielder Fatima Haidari to fellow members of Afghan Women United.

Applause erupts in the room where an Afghan flag hangs and a patriotic song is played. As the women sing along some struggle to hold back tears.

There’s a final team huddle with words of encouragement from their coach before they head out to the pitch – a place that for years they had been told they did not belong.

The 23-player squad, selected from Afghan players now living abroad, has travelled to New Zealand for a training camp and to play two unofficial friendly games against the Cook Islands.

This is the first time they have been together since football governing body Fifa ruled in April that they could represent their country in official matches in the future.

Previously, they would have needed the approval of the Afghanistan Football Federation. This was not possible under the Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021, imposing wide-ranging restrictions on women and girls, including barring them from secondary school and university, most professions and organised sport.

The country’s national women’s team, formed in 2007, could no longer play and its members were among those evacuated and resettled in countries including Australia, the UK and Portugal.

Years of campaigning led to the creation of a refugee team, which became Afghan Women United. Thanks to Fifa’s ruling, it can now try to qualify for international competitions such as the Olympics and World Cup.

Gathered in New Zealand, the squad is excited to be playing together – as asylum seekers living in various countries it has been hard for them to get the travel documents in order to train as a team over the past five years.

Sitting in the hotel in Auckland the day before the match, Manozh Noori, who has short hair, wears a T-shirt and knee-length shorts – a look that she says has often drawn criticism from relatives for looking too masculine.

As the 23-year-old speaks to BBC Global Women about her family, her voice begins to falter. She pauses, takes a deep breath and looks away for a moment before continuing. There are no tears, but the emotion is clear.

Noori now lives in Australia but she grew up playing football with boys in the streets of Kabul.

After seeing women’s football on television, she secretly joined local clubs and gradually rose through the ranks in Afghanistan.

She knew her older brother would disapprove so she tried to reduce the risk of being recognised by wearing a face covering.

Over six years, she won league titles, national championships and individual awards.

Eventually her success became impossible to hide. In about 2018 her fellow players persuaded her to remove her face covering for a TV interview, which was shown on the news along with highlights of their match.

Then she had to face the reality that her brother might see it. “I was so scared,” she recalls. “I kept thinking, ‘He’s going to see me. He’s going to know.'”

In desperation, she tried to stop the family from watching the news by turning off the electricity, but word soon reached her brother and he was furious, she says.

“He was screaming,” Noori says. “‘You told us you were studying. You said you wanted to become a teacher or a doctor. What is this?'”

He threatened to cut his ties with the family if she didn’t stop, she adds. “My mother was crying. She told me, ‘He’s the person who supports us financially. How are we going to survive?'”

Noori did stop playing for a while, but eventually started again. She says her other brother, who lives in Germany, sent money to help finance her dream.

When the Taliban took over in 2021, Noori decided to flee, but first she buried her football medals and trophies in the garden of her family home.

More than four years later, they remain there.

“One day I will go back and dig them out,” she says, briefly smiling at the thought.

“Football helped me get my mum and sister out of Afghanistan,” she says. Two years after she moved to Australia and established herself as a football player, she was able to bring them over as well.

This meant her sister was able to study again – even though her brother didn’t want them playing sports, he always supported their education. “I hope my brother now realises I am not a bad person,” says Noori.

As she and the team prepare for the matches in Auckland, many of them describe football as the reason they survived one of the most turbulent periods in their country’s recent history.

“If I wasn’t a footballer, I would still be in Afghanistan, one of millions of girls who are not allowed to study, speak up or choose their own future,” says Mursal Sadat, who also lives in Australia.

Now 24, she works as a football coach, youth facilitator and advocate for refugees, women’s rights and human rights.

In Afghanistan, she says she was often judged, harassed and told that no-one would want to marry a woman who played sport.

Today she is engaged to a man who is still in Afghanistan, and says he and his family are supportive of her work and place on the national team. “They tell me, ‘You are the pride of our family. We are so lucky to have you.'”

As the players step out into the driving Auckland rain to face the Cook Islands, they channel their energy and determination, unfazed by the weather. They have faced much tougher conditions back home.

As a teenager, defender Najma Arefi trained in temperatures above 45C (113F) because girls were often given the least desirable training slots.

Still, she persisted.

The 22-year-old’s efforts eventually helped a Herat-based team win a national championship.

The victory, she says, changed attitudes towards women’s sport in the city.

“There were billboards of us across Herat,” she recalls. “People were proud. More families started letting their daughters play football.”

She now lives in Doncaster in northern England. She arrived in the UK after the Taliban takeover.

She describes herself as an extrovert and says she now has opportunities she never imagined growing up in Afghanistan.

She studies criminal justice at college, plays football and makes decisions independently. “Having that freedom is incredible,” she says.

Yet she admits she often feels guilty and desperately sad about the freedoms denied to women back home.

“Millions of girls don’t have the chance to study or follow their dreams. I feel I have to make the most of every opportunity.

“Sometimes I put too much pressure on myself,” she says, tears rolling down her face.

She thanks Khalida Popal, who founded the original Afghan women’s team, for pushing Fifa to recognise them now they are in exile. “To receive Fifa’s recognition without the approval of the Taliban” has made history, she says.

This official status is “something I’ll always be proud of”, she says.

When the BBC asked the Taliban’s director for sports, Ahmadullah Wasiq, about Fifa backing the women’s team, he declined to comment. But he said he would like Fifa to visit the country and resume its support for football there in general – the organisation largely withdrew after the Taliban came to power. Fifa has previously said any resumption of support would depend on women being allowed to play.

The game in Auckland turns out to be unforgiving. A single goal in the first match hands the Cook Islands a 1-0 victory. Three days later, despite the Afghan team’s best efforts, the Cook Islands win again, this time 3-0.

Yet for the players, these matches represent something far more significant than two defeats.

A return to the pitch and proof that despite exile, separation from their families and years of uncertainty, Afghanistan’s women footballers refused to disappear.