Exposing one of the biggest sports scandals: The incredible story of former Afghan footballer Khalida Popal
Khalida Popal is a former football player from Afghanistan. In her life, she received a lot of hate and resistance for playing football. It was simply not accepted for women to play sports. But Popal fought bravely, founded the women’s national team and exposed one of the biggest football scandals in the world.

Khalida Popal was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. As a child, football was her life. It was everything she ever wanted to do and everything she dreamt of. But as a female teenager playing football, she often received discrimination and oppression. As the war in the Middle East continued, women in Kabul had little to no human rights and the Taliban banned women from playing sports. So there was only one thing she could do: to play secretively in isolated yards with her other female friends.
Even when the Taliban’s reign over Afghanistan ended in 2001, still faced threats from her local community. Many people disapproved of women who played football and she recalls people throwing stones at them and calling them ‘prostitutes’ for playing football.
In 2007, Popal, who was twenty at the time, founded the Afghan women’s football team with the support of the Afghan Football Association. As the team started to grow and gain more attention, Popal, who captained the side, became a high-profile target for extremists and anti-women groups. At the time, she was also the first woman to be employed by the Afghan Football Federation.
Death threats
But after receiving many death threats, Popal went into exile. She first moved to India, then sought asylum in Norway before eventually being granted residency in Denmark. She remained connected to Afghanistan and was involved in many activities supporting the development of the Afghan women’s national team, even though the team was shut down after she left the country.
In Denmark, Popal played football for a local team, hoping to achieve her goal of becoming a professional player in Europe. Unfortunately, she suffered a horrific injury that prevented her from playing football again. In an interview in 2017, Popal stated that she had lost everything. ‘’I’d lost my country, my identity, I was in an asylum centre, I’d lost my family, I couldn’t play. I felt like a doll hanging in the air. I could not fly in the sky and I could not come to the ground.’’
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Girl Power Organisation
After sustaining the injury, Popal focused her attention elsewhere and became the founder and Director of the Girl Power Organisation in 2014. It’s their mission to provide meaningful ways for women and girls to connect and thrive using sport and education, but also to create opportunities for women from various backgrounds, to empower social leaders and to shift outdated mindsets on gender equality in sports by showcasing effective alternatives. They use sport as a tool to integrate refugees, migrants and immigrants, within their local communities and to empower women providing new strength and hope in life.
‘’I played as a defender, and my role was to defend my team,’’ says Popal on the Girl Power Organisation’s website. ‘’Today, I am a defender of Human Rights, and this is my role to advocate for human rights by using the power of my voice and platform.’’
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Exposing a sexual abuse scandal
In 2016, Popal was able to reestablish Afghanistan’s Women’s National Team, without having to set foot in Afghanistan. The team only played abroad and until 2018 everything went well. But then Popal found out that the players who still lived in Afghanistan and who were being supported by employees of the football association were being sexually harassed. ‘’During the last training camp, I heard some disturbing rumours,’’ Popal told MO Magazine. ‘’We found out that the employees were putting pressure on the players and forcing them to have sex with them. During the camp, I told the chairman of the football association and he promised me that these men would be punished upon their return.’’
The opposite, however, happened. Not the men, but the players were punished. ‘’The players were banned because they were so-called lesbians. An accusation like that could cost you your life in Afghanistan.’’
Popal decided to do more research on the sexual abuse and discovered a perverse system of abuse which was set up by the people in the highest positions in the football association. It was not just the women’s team that was suffering from sexual abuse, but also the men’s team. ‘’During conversations with multiple players, we found out that the chairman, together with some of his closest employees, were sexually abusing underage footballers and female players. It turned out that he had a secret room in the office building of the football association where he abused and raped players.’’
After sharing her findings with FIFA and the international press, the government and FIFA took action. The chairman Keramuddin Karim was suspended for life by FIFA and fired from the National Football Association. His secretary, Sayed Ali Reza Aghazada, received an international ban of five years for not reporting and investigating the abuse in the women’s team. Everything involved, however, has never received a jail sentence.
Today, Popal doesn’t work with the Afghan women’s national team anymore. But she’s playing an active role as a Director for the Girl Power Organisation and being an inspiration to people all over the world. She is also a Program Manager for the Right To Dream Academy and FC Nordsjaelland, an ambassador for the ‘European Week of Sport Denmark’ and a member of the UNHCR Sport for Refugees Coalition.
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