PESHAWAR (Pajhwok): Female footballers from Afghanistan have come to the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with their families, claiming Taliban danger. On Tuesday night, they crossed the Torkham border entering Pakistan after the government issued emergency humanitarian visas to allow them to flee their homeland following the Taliban takeover.
The female players will travel from Peshawar to Lahore, where they will be lodged at the Pakistan Football Federal (PFF) headquarters, according to officials.
The ladies were supposed to fly to Qatar, where Afghan refugees are being housed at a facility in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, but were delayed after a bombing at Kabul airport on August 26.
Meanwhile, the Taliban were threatening footballers from the national junior girls team because of their participation in sports. Earlier After an agreement with the Australian government, the majority of the Afghan national women’s team flew out in the last week of August; however, the youth team was unable to fly due to a lack of passports and other documentation. They’d been hiding since then to avoid the Taliban.
The decision to bring the 32 footballers to Pakistan, along with their families, was made by the British NGO Football for Peace in collaboration with the government and the Pakistan Football Federation of Ashfaq Hussain Shah, which isn’t recognized by FIFA.
“We launched these efforts a few weeks ago and we’re extremely thankful to the government and PFF president Ashfaq Hussain Shah and vice president Aamir Dogar for facilitating us,” Pakistan ambassador of Football for Peace Sardar Naveed Haider Khan, a former member of Ashfaq’s PFF, told Dawn on Tuesday night.
