It's the championship of the Afghan women's soccer league in the capital, and the Herat Storm is facing off against the Kabul Fortress. This is a conservative country, NPR 24 Hour Program Stream On Air Now and the players sprint across the field in long-sleeved shirts, and leggings under their baggy shorts. Black hoodie-style hijabs cover their hair

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Women Of Afghanistan Won't Give Up Their Soccer
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November 8, 2020 · 7:00 AM ET
DIAA HADID KHWAGA GHANI
Players from the Herat Storm celebrate after winning the championship of the Afghan women's soccer league on October 16
in Kabul.
Rahmatullah Alizadah/Xinhua via Getty Images
It's the championship of the Afghan women's soccer league in the capital, and the
Herat Storm is facing off against the Kabul Fortress. This is a conservative country,
NPR 24 Hour Program Stream
On Air Now

2. and the players sprint across the field in long-sleeved shirts, and leggings under their
baggy shorts. Black hoodie-style hijabs cover their hair.
Men and boys clump in one bunch of seats; women and girls in another, but they're
feisty: hollering, hooting and banging on drums as the players kick goals.
Despite the conservative clothes and the gender segregation, this scene on a crisp fall
day in mid-October was once unthinkable. It took the Taliban being toppled and
nearly two decades of activism to get here.
It's even more remarkable that the women are playing in this Kabul stadium. This is
where the Taliban once meted out punishments to men and women who who violated
their strict rules. The punishments were so gruesome that when the stadium was
renovated in 2007, contractors removed about two feet of soil to ensure people didn't
play on the remains of other Afghans.
Much of this happened before the captain of Herat Storm, 20-year-old Sabria Nawrozi,
was even born. But her father told her that the Taliban would "make people stand in a
line and shoot them or hang them, and the bodies would dangle in the sun for days."

3. Portrait of Sabria Nawrozi, 20, the captain of Herat Storm.

4. Khwaga Ghani/NPR
She spoke at the stadium before the final match, pointing to the bleachers where
crowds had gathered: "Now when I see it, it's a green place. It brings joy to people.
They come to be happy and cheer on the teams they love."
And she is determined to keep playing: "If we back off because of the problems and
difficulties we will never get to success." She's unafraid, saying, "I was only
concentrating on my goals, and that's why I didn't have any fear."
Her father, she says, is "my biggest supporter until now, and now I have another big
support who is my [fiancé]. It is a pride for me. I am happy to have them."
"Afghan women playing football is incredibly exhilarating," says Heather Barr, interim
co-director of the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch. Referring the days
of Taliban rule, she says: "Sometimes they weren't allowed to leave the house at all,
and they weren't allowed to go to school."
Fast forward to 2020: "So the idea that you have teams of girls and young women
running around and screaming and jumping and kicking and hollering and hugging
each other and crowds of women in the stands cheering them on is – yeah – it's
exhilarating."
Getting here, though, hasn't been easy.
Take Nawrozi, the captain of the Herat Storm. She joined the soccer league when it
began five years ago.
She says their neighbors used to harass her mother to ditch soccer. "They said my
sports clothes are immodest. They said oh, we saw your daughter on TV," she laughs.
It's shameful, in their view, because they consider it not appropriate for women to play
football or be shown on the TV screen — men could see them.
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