After transferring round a bit, Sodaba Khinjani and a few of her teammates lastly settled in Houston in June 2023.
HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — After years of worry and uncertainty, members of the Afghan girls’s soccer group made historical past Sunday night time by returning to the pitch in Houston for his or her first group observe on American soil.
The gamers feared for his or her lives and fled Afghanistan in 2021 after the Taliban took over their house nation. Beneath the Taliban’s authoritarian rule, Afghan girls and women have suffered tremendously. The federal government took away their proper to training, employment and participation in sports activities.
Based on FIFA, Sodaba Khinjani was a part of a gaggle of greater than 150 Afghan refugees related to girls’s sport in Afghanistan who FIFA helped evacuate from Kabul. Khinjani was a member of the ladies’s soccer group.
“To say goodbye to my household, to say goodbye to Afghanistan, and to go away Kabul, it wasn’t straightforward. It was essentially the most troublesome choice that I ever made in my life, as a result of think about you simply go away your the whole lot and also you wish to go to a different nation and also you wish to begin from zero, so it’s an enormous threat,” Khinjani mentioned.
However Khinjani mentioned the concept of staying in Afghanistan, particularly as a feminine athlete, was terrifying, as a result of the Taliban had been persecuting girls concerned in sports activities.
“After we had been in Afghanistan, they only killed two girls from sports activities. They only reduce their head, and it was like an enormous shock for us,” Khinjani mentioned. “We had been afraid of that, that possibly they are going to enter via our home, and they’ll rape us and they’ll marry us by power, this was our largest worry.”
Khinjani mentioned she was a legal within the eyes of the Taliban.
“The one factor our crime was, first to be a girl in Afghanistan, and the second factor, second crime, was to be in a sport,” Khinjani mentioned.
After transferring round a bit, Khinjani and a few of her teammates lastly settled in Houston in June 2023. Practically two years later, they held their first group observe at Bayland Park in southwest Houston Sunday night time. However for these girls, it was not only a soccer observe. It was a return to a recreation they love and a life they left behind.
“We simply missed this happiness, this pleasure and this enjoyment. And now I’m actually, actually glad,” Khinjani mentioned.
She added that seeing her teammates run, dribble and kick – after enduring the hardships they’ve – is a real testomony to their tenacity and resilience.
“All of them are superwomen in my eyes,” Khinjani mentioned. “They should have an excellent life, the free life. They should be free.”
Model-new soccer cleats and the observe subject at Bayland Park are because of Harris County Precinct 4. Commissioner Lesley Briones mentioned she and her group wished to do no matter they may to assist the ladies.
“This soccer subject might be their new house right here within the U.S., after which we additionally, via our Precinct4Forward, our nonprofit arm, made a donation so they may get their cleats,” Briones mentioned. “We’re going to not solely welcome them and assist them and ensure they’re secure, however be sure that they’re celebrated, and as we put together to host the World Cup in 2026 and a part of FIFA’s platform is to ensure we’re advocating for human rights throughout the globe, right here is an instance of what we’re doing regionally to assist that important mission.”
Because the gamers begin anew, they’re hoping to have the ability to compete on the world stage.
“We’re right here, and we’re going to make Afghan girls nationwide group soccer once more,” Khinjani mentioned.
