Nadia Nadim on women’s football in Afghanistan one year on from Taliban takeover
Nadia Nadim is an independent journalist and founder of @WomenFootballAfghanistan and has been covering women’s football in Afghanistan since late 2016. She reports regularly on football development, but also covers cultural development, education, health, and environmental issues, among other subjects.
Nadia Nadim on women’s football in Afghanistan one year on from Taliban takeover
Nadia Nadim on women’s football in Afghanistan one year on from Taliban takeover
Nadia Nadim, one of the longest-running independent journalists in Afghanistan, is an independent journalist and founder of @WomenFootballAfghanistan and has been covering women’s football in Afghanistan since late 2016. She reports regularly on football development, but also covers cultural development, education, health, and environmental issues, among other subjects.
When the Taliban finally came to power in 2001, it changed the face of Afghan football forever. It took over the national federation and replaced it with an organisation it controlled.
It gave women a voice in leadership and organisation, and allowed them to hold positions on committees that had been previously closed to them, and even made one high-ranking woman member head of the national football association, which now has 50 members.
But after 15 years of being under the strictures of the state, women eventually felt as if they were losing their freedom. In June 2015, the Taliban issued a decree that allowed women to enter all military and security positions. It was one of the first such official pronouncements by the group of Islamic conservatives.
The decree did not go down too well with Afghan men, and led to an exodus of male footballers from provincial teams to national teams. This exodus has continued, as the country has had a few of the longest-running amateur women football leagues worldwide. In 2015, over 500 players left the national women’s league, which is now called the Afghanistan Women’s League, which had been around since 2006.
To combat the exodus