Afghan women barred from sport face Taliban intimidation

Afghan women and girls who once played a variety of sports say they have faced intimidation from the Taliban, including visits and phone calls warning them not to take part.

Since they took power in August 2021, the Taliban have banned sports for women and girls, part of a series of measures that have virtually shut down life for women in Afghanistan.

One woman said Taliban fighters came to a gym where she was giving private lessons to women in mixed martial arts and detained all of them.

Another female athlete said she had received threatening phone calls.

Since their takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have also barred girls from attending middle and high school. Last month, they ordered all women to be thrown out of universities as well.

The Taliban require women to cover their hair and faces in public and prohibit them from going to parks or gyms.

They have severely limited women’s ability to work outside the home and most recently forbade non-governmental organisations from employing women, a step that could cripple the vital flow of aid.

Even before the Taliban returned, women’s sports were opposed by many in Afghanistan’s deeply conservative society, seen as a violation of women’s modesty and of their role in life.

However, the previous, internationally-backed government initiated programmes encouraging women’s sports and school clubs, as well as leagues and national teams for women in many sports.

Sarina, a 20-year-old mixed martial artist, recalled how in August 2021, she was competing in a local women’s tournament at a Kabul sports hall.

Word spread through the audience and participants that the advancing Taliban were on the city’s outskirts. All the women and girls fled the hall. It was the