Unifying forces are a wonderful thing. Universal unifying forces – the kind that unite whole populations – have the power to move mountains. Music is one such force. Ukraine’s answer to Bruce Springsteen, Slava Vakarchuk, began using his music to do just that in the fight against Russia. Slava, the lead singer of popular Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy, could have left Ukraine when the invasion occurred. Instead, he donned a military uniform and began singing to his people in subway stations, bomb shelters, hospitals and on the frontlines.
Slava once considered running for the Ukrainian presidency. Instead, he returned to his true passion and is now using his songs and folk music to unite Ukrainians. Slava embraces music to boost morale, lessen the feelings of fear in those around him and enable Ukrainians to process the emotions of war. It is this kind of leadership, alongside that of President Zelensky, that is earning admiration from around the globe.
A second unifying force is sport. It’s heart-warming to hear stories of people connecting through both music and sport. It’s even more encouraging when such stories relate to refugees. Last August, as Kabul fell to the Taliban, three Afghan women’s soccer teams faced a life-threatening future. The Afghan national women’s soccer team, the youth girls’ soccer team and the women’s youth development team were all trapped in a country where women no longer had rights. Removal of the right to play sport was top of the list. Doing so is considered a political act of defiance and places the players at severe risk of persecution.
Amid the chaos of Kabul airport as Afghans once again found themselves facing Taliban rule, the Australian government coordinated a frantic evacuation of nearly 80 players, coaches and their families from the Afghanistan national women’s soccer team. Earlier that month, the players had been urged to delete their social media profiles, burn their sports attire and destroy their trophies for fear of Taliban retribution. Khalida Popal, a former captain and co-founder of the team was forced to leave Afghanistan in 2011. Khalida worked tirelessly to organise evacuation routes for all the soccer teams out of the country.
A short time later, the Afghanistan youth girls’ soccer team was flown out in another harrowing rescue mission. The mission was coordinated by an international team of humanitarian agencies, former United States military and intelligence officials and a United States Senator, all given a three-hour window of opportunity to make the rescue flight happen. Eighty Afghans – 26 players and their family members – were moved from safe house to safe house, enduring numerous setbacks and failed rescue attempts before the unbelievable was achieved. The chartered flight, with an unknown destination, landed safely in Lisbon, Portugal last September.
The last of the female soccer teams to evacuate was the Afghanistan's women's youth development soccer team. The squad, which included teenage players, was unable to fly out of Afghanistan. In September, the girls and their families made a land crossing into Pakistan with the help of the chairman of the English Premier League Leeds United football club and the Tzadek Association, a non-profit organisation assisting the evacuation of Jewish individuals from Kabul. For two months the girls remained in Pakistan on temporary visas, uncertain where they would go next.
The founder of the Tzadek Association, American Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, reached out to Kim Kardashian for support in funding a flight to the United Kingdom where the girls had secured visas. Rabbi Margaretten had previously worked with Ms Kardashian on criminal justice reform in the United States. Generously, Ms Kardashian volunteered to fund the entire flight. Ten coaches, 25 teenage players and almost 100 family members were flown to safety in London. Since their arrival, the girls continue to be supported by Leeds United. They officially began training at the football club’s training facility last November.
The national women’s team eventually made it to Melbourne. Eight months after the ordeal, the players have returned to competitive football, competing in the first game of Victoria’s 2022 State League 4 campaign. The Afghan team in exile played ETA Buffalo, a club with a similarly inspirational story, having been founded by East Timorese refugees in the early 1980’s.
The success of these Afghan female soccer teams is a beautiful reminder that unifying forces can indeed move mountains. These committed and passionate women of the national team are demonstrating exactly that under the support and guidance of the Melbourne Victory Football Club. While it’s been an incredible difficult journey, the courage and strength of these players is truly inspirational and collectively represents the resiliency of Afghan women everywhere.
This resiliency is echoed in another incredible story involving Afghan women. It is a story of shared military experiences. While perhaps not as universally unifying as music or sport, the story behind these women reads like a Hollywood movie script. In the late 2000’s, the United States military established ‘Cultural Support Teams’. These all-female units were designed to assist in gaining access to information held by Afghan women, the type of information that had previously been off limits to their male counterparts. The CSTs began operating alongside their Special Operations Command colleagues at a time when women were still barred from frontline ground combat operations. However, the CSTs quickly became one of the United States military’s most useful assets.
The success of the CSTs encouraged the creation of an Afghan equivalent, a unit without the language or cultural barriers the American women faced. It was an opportunity many of the Afghan recruits could barely imagine in a country that had formerly prohibited girls from getting an education. These Afghan recruits formed a covert Female Tactical Platoon (FTP). They were trained and mentored by their American female colleagues to conduct high-risk, cover-of-darkness missions to target Taliban and Da’esh fighters. Throughout the operations the FTP members would search and question Afghan women and children. It was a task that their male colleagues were not permitted to undertake in a Muslim country.
The FTP members were taught to drive military vehicles, operate multiple weapons systems, perform fast rope insertions, conduct building clearances, undertake canine work and execute airborne operations, all in preparation for working alongside the Ktah Khas, the Afghan Special Forces. The bravery, loyalty and determination of these women cemented their reputation as fierce operators with a unique ability to gain vital access to information that their male colleagues could not obtain.
Incredibly, these women elected to join the Afghan military often without the knowledge or permission of their families. Most of the FTP members are Hazara Afghans, one of the most persecuted ethnic groups on earth. These women bravely choose to fight back against a fallen regime that had a history of persecuting their own people and who would kill the FPT members on sight if given the chance. In the span of a decade, the FTP members conducted around 2000 missions alongside their American and Afghan colleagues.
When it became apparent that a Taliban return to power was eminent last year, American service women who had served alongside the FTP members began working to secure their evacuation from Afghanistan. In an incredible effort, 39 (of 50) FTP members and their families secured flights out of Kabul as the Taliban began hunting down current and former Afghan military members.
The FTP members have now resettled across the United States through the help of Sister of Service, an organisation formed by these same American service women. In additional to facilitating their resettlement, Sisters of Service assists by connecting each FTP member with a current or former service woman to act as a mentor, ensuring each Afghan woman gets the necessary guidance and support to adjust to life in America.
This story is particularly close to my heart because I mentor one of these girls, Amina*. Amina is a slight mid-20s, five-foot-nothing pocket rocket. She is absolutely fearless. One moment she was sprinting off an army helicopter into the dusty midnight air of the Afghan countryside, scanning remote village compounds for the Taliban. The next, she was hurriedly packing bags and desperately seeking a route out of Kabul, terrified for her life. She went from elite operator, with more combat experience than many western special forces soldiers, to refugee overnight. The contrast between life today and life a year ago could not be starker.
Understanding what these women sacrificed is a story that will break your heart. But the future that awaits not only the FTP women but also the Afghan soccer players will make you smile through the tears. There are unifying stories out there and this is one of them. If these women – who come from a country where being female is almost considered a crime – can become elite military warriors or inspirational sports women, then anything is possible. Anything.
All views expressed within are the authors only.
*For security reasons, Amina’s name has been changed.
For further information on Sisters of Service and the stories above:
https://sistersofservice.org/
https://penfedfoundation.org/apply-for-assistance/afghan-refugee-and-resettlement-program/
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2022/afghan-women-soldiers-taliban-us-refugees/
https://www.combatstory.com/ (story #68)