Islamabad: Afghan Women’s Football Team has gone to the neighboring city of Pakistan, the Information Minister in Islamabad said on Tuesday, as a question lingering rather than the status of a female athletes under the Taliban rule.
“We welcome the Afghan women’s soccer team, they arrived at Torkham’s border from Afghanistan,” Fawad Chaudhry, Minister of Information on Pakistan, in a tweet, added that they were accepted by representatives of the Pakistani Football Federation.
Chaudhry did not provide details and not immediately clear how many players entered the country and what his plan was.
Departure is part of a wider exodus of Afghan intellectuals and public figures, especially women since the Taliban took over the country a month ago.
When the last Islamic group ruled Afghanistan two decades ago, girls were not permitted to attend school and women were banned from work and education.
Women are prohibited from sports and it will likely continue in this regime too.
Taliban representatives last week told Australian Broadcaster SBS that he did not think women would be allowed to play cricket because it was “no need” and would oppose Islam.
“Islam and the Islamic Emirates do not allow women to play cricket or play the type of sport where they are affected,” SBS quoted the deputy head of the Taliban Cultural Commission, said.
Some of the former soccer players and women currently fled the country after the Taliban takeover, while a former team captain urged players still in Afghanistan to burn their sports equipment and delete their social media accounts to avoid retaliation.
The sports bodies that ruled FIFA last month worked to evacuate those left in the country.