A national volleyball player killing confirms the international community is at a crossroads in Afghanistan
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Roshan Amiri
- . June 22, 2020
- . Update: October 21, 2021 7:46 pm
At the time of the Ashraf Ghani’s government fall, Hakimi played in the Kabul Municipality Volleyball Club. Afzal revealed that since the coup last August, the Taliban tried to identify the athletes, especially those of the national volleyball team, who competed in international contests and appeared on TV in the past. Only two team members managed to flee before the Taliban took control of the capital.
In recent weeks, about thirty professionals from the Afghanistan national volleyball team had already expressed their fears of violence and acts of revenge by the Taliban for their sports careers, urging the international community to help them escape. In August, some teammates who managed to leave the Country reported the killing of another player with gunshots. Hakimi was among the many professionals left behind. Last week, Fifa and the Qatari government – the main responsible for this situation – successfully evacuated 100 female players from the Emir, including some within the national team and their families.
Inexplicably surprised by these events, the international community faces a fundamental political, ethical, practical dilemma, which it is struggling to deal with it. Of course, the protection of human rights has always been complicated, even under the Islamic Republic and due to the international community’s failure, which endorsed the binomial impunity-corruption. Still, the political and social space for women has already significantly reduced.
The advanced submission of the media accompanies the progressive denial of public space for women to government control and the significant reduction of the room for maneuver to exercise freedom of expression and opinion. The directives for the media, made official in September, are an unmistakable signal, like the violence deployed against some Afghan journalists.
