“T hey tried to silence me,” Khalida Popal says with unflinching clarity as she remembers the moment when, in 2011, she knew she had to leave Afghanistan for ever. As the co-founder of the national women’s football team, and their first captain who had since become the unlikely head of finance at the otherwise all-male Afghanistan federation, Popal’s outspoken defiance made her a target for assassination. “I faced many challenges, like death threats,” she continues on a mild afternoon in London.
“I was always followed and threatened. There was a moment where I saw a gunman coming towards the car I was in so I am thankful for the traffic in Kabul. Usually I was frustrated by the traffic, but that time it saved my life as I managed to jump out of the car and run as fast as I could and hide myself.
“I was lucky I survived. The situation got worse and the police wanted to arrest me. There was so much danger towards me and my family.
I put them in a really horrible situation because it’s so dangerous provoking people in an Islamic country. It won’t take long to be stoned or shot. I was accused of being against Islam and wanting to brainwash women to play football.
” ‘It’s heartbreaking’: Malala Yousafzai meets exiled Afghanistan women’s football team Read more Popal was forced into exile and, after a desolate time in refugee centres, she is now a stateless citizen who lives in Denmark. Her gripping and moving new book , written with Suzanne Wrack of th.
