Afghan women's team recognized in blow to Taliban

Banned from playing football and sent into exile, Afghanistan's women's team has had to fight to regain international status.

That newly awarded recognition is a "hard slap to the face" of the Taliban, a player told DW.

After years of fleeing, fighting, advocating and training, Afghanistan's women have won the right to compete for football's biggest prizes as their country's official national team.

An unprecedented decision made by world football's governing body, FIFA, in Toronto on Tuesday paves the way for the current squad to try to qualify for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 and then future World Cups and Asian Cups.

It is another huge step for a team who have had to fight for their right to play, with the Taliban-run football association refusing to sanction an Afghanistan national women's team.

"It's something really huge for us, to show the world that Afghan women and girls are capable of doing amazing things," national team goalkeeper Elaha Safdari told DW.

"It's a hard slap to the face of the Taliban and those people who were against us.

Football and freedom: Afghan women against the world
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Afghan example may open the door for others
Safdari was one of the Afghanistan Women's United squad who took part in a small tournament called 'FIFA Unites Women's Series' in Morocco in 2025.

The squad are made up of refugees who now live mostly in Australia and Europe and have faced a host of logistical and political challenges.

They will likely form the bulk of the new national team.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino said the amendment made at the organization's Council was "momentous." He said it meant FIFA can now "approve the registration of a national or representative team under exceptional circumstances where a Member Association is unable to do so."
"This is a powerful and unprecedented step in world sport," he added.

"FIFA has listened to these players as part of its responsibility to protect the right of every girl and woman to play football and to represent who they are."
Infantino also pointed to his organization's 'Strategy  for Action for Afghan Women's Football, approved in 2025, as a key driver of the change.

Andrea Florence, the Executive Director of the Sport and Rights Alliance advocacy group, pointed out that the precedent set by this amendment "demonstrates that governing bodies can adapt their rules to protect human rights when extraordinary circumstances demand it."
This will likely open the door for other national teams, often women's ones, who are denied the opportunity to play by their federations.

Big moment in Afghanistan and in exile
Khalida Popal, the former Afghanistan captain, who has become a figurehead for the new generation, sat next to Infantino when the news was announced as the current squad watched together online elsewhere.

"It means so much.

The whole situation that Afghanistan women have is very emotional," she said.

"This is our moment, this is our time and football is our voice and our platform."
For Safdari and her teammates, this is a chance to look ahead and build on the momentum and team spirit forged at the tournament in Morocco, in which the Afghans were not recognized as a full national team.

"Our situation is quite different from other teams but I feel like that's a big strength for us," Safdari said.

"We've been training hard, we've been aiming for this, and it's a new hope for us.

It shows our resilience and it just shows that if we work hard, we can definitely achieve [our goals]."
Fight not over until Taliban are out
Dreams in the dust - The divided rise of Afghan cricket
The squad, who are funded and supported by FIFA during international breaks, are set to get together in New Zealand for their first matches since the games in Morocco last October.

They will play a match against the Cook Islands as part of an eight-day training camp before Olympic qualifiers are set to start, likely later this year.

That will be followed, eventually, by World Cup and Asian Cup qualifiers and all sorts of other opportunities afforded to them by their new status.

"It sounds really great [to hear Afghanistan can compete in those tournaments] and I still cannot believe it that we are finally official and we can play qualifiers," Safdari said.

With the team having barely been in the same country, let alone played together in recent years, there is plenty of work to do to catch up.

But for players like Safdari who have had to forge new lives in foreign lands at a young age while fighting for their right to play football, that is not a daunting proposition.