Long way from Kabul

Once forbidden to play sports, Afghan girls learn about soccer, U.S.

Friday, July 30, 2004

Story and photographs by Tracy Boulian

The Plain Dealer

The girls from Afghanistan were smiling, even though some were sweating, injured and frustrated as they ran up and down the field, learning to play soccer as a team.

A few months ago, most of them had never played any kind of soccer. Few of the eight girls knew each other.

But this month, they were in Simsbury, Conn., thousands of miles from their home city of Kabul, where under Taliban rule before December 2001, they had been forbidden to play sports, go to school, work and show themselves uncovered in public. Though those bans have been lifted, most women and girls still don't play on organized sports teams. Awista Ayub would like to see that - and other things - change in Afghanistan.

Ayub, 24, is an Afghan-American who has lived in this country since she was 2. Last year, the Waterbury, Conn., resident came up with a plan to bring a group of girls from Afghanistan to the United States to teach them soccer, a relatively easy sport to learn and transport back to their country. Ayub's Afghan Youth Sports Exchange is a nonprofit organization created to promote leadership through sports and to show Afghan children a world outside their own.

But her idea took an even more worldly turn when she learned about the International Children's Games in Cleveland. The team, she decided, would compete.

On June 20, eight girls from Kabul, ages 11 to 16, were flown to the United States to learn soccer and compete in Cleveland.

For three weeks, six hours a day, four days a week, the girls practiced soccer at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury. They say they've relished the experience, and being in the United States has opened their minds. Their hearts, though, are back home. And these eight girls - the first delegation from Afghanistan to compete in the children's games - has a new goal once they are back there: bringing home what they've learned, both about sports and other cultures.