“Sparkles in the darkness” for Afghanistan’s girls and women

It so happened that the parade of nations at the Tokyo Olympic Games saw Greece go first, followed by the Refugee Olympic Team, followed – just four teams later – by Afghanistan. 

Nigara Shaheen, a judo athlete on the Refugee Team from Afghanistan, could see the traditional clothes of her nation’s athletes. Coaches from her home country called out to her to say, you should be competing for us. 

She felt differently. “I was so proud to be part of the Refugee Team,” she said. “Some people maybe don’t like the term ‘Refugee Team’. They would like to be part of their own country. For me, it felt like my own story.”

Nigara Shaheen’s story – an incredible tale of determination and persistence – is just one of dozens that has, from the beginning, since the Rio 2016 Games, helped shape the Olympic community’s unprecedented response to a world buffeted by conflict.

IOC support has been consistent. At the end of 2022, 52 refugee athlete scholarship-holders, from 12 countries, were living in 18 host nations, training for qualification in 10 sports. Nigara Shaheen is one of those. More are due to be announced.

In the case of Afghanistan in particular, support – since the fall of Kabul in the summer of 2021, days after the close of the Tokyo Olympics – has been not only consistent but unyielding, with a special focus on women and girls.

“We are,” in the remarkable words of the Secretary General of the still-recognised National Olympic Committee, Yonus Popalzay, “the only sparkles in the darkness for the women in Afghanistan.” 

With the Taliban takeover, the IOC has called upon the highest authorities – formally since a meeting in Qatar in November 2021 – to reverse the restrictions imposed on women and girls in the country, and pushed for access to sport for women and girls in Afghanistan. Talks are ongoing. Meantime, the IOC continues to directly support athletes and Olympic Solidarity scholarship-holders so they can train and compete.

In exile, the NOC has managed, again with IOC support, to keep at work. Afghanistan sent a 48-person team to the formally titled 2021 Islamic Solidarity Games, which – because of the pandemic – were actually staged in August 2022, in Konya, Türkiye. That team included women’s volleyball and handball squads. 

“I felt like a bird flying in the sky freely, and felt so proud,” said Nargis Mosavi, the volleyball team captain and a member of the NOC athletes’ commission.

Added team manager Hanifa Arabzada, “The situation might get worse for women in Afghanistan, but I am so proud that I participated in the Islamic Games representing Afghan women among the 57 Islamic countries thanks to Olympic Solidarity and the NOC [of Afghanistan] standing by us.”

In September 2021, the IOC President announced that all the Afghan athletes who had taken part in Tokyo 2020 were outside the country. Two winter sports athletes: also out. 

Out, too, were Popalzay and, separately, the NOC President. Ultimately, 300 people left on humanitarian visas, the IOC President saying, “It shows that quiet diplomacy works, and what effect it can have.”

Popalzay and his family are now in France. He was in Tokyo, at the Games, when he said, “I got a call from my wife. She said, it’s good you’re not here in Kabul because the situation is going to be very dangerous. Of course, she

was very concerned, and when we returned to Kabul from Tokyo, half of Afghanistan was captured by the Taliban and within a week they trounced the entire country.

“… Anything could happen at any time. The IOC showed strong and immediate solidarity. It helped, and evacuated us with the support of the UCI President, the minister of foreign affairs of France and Paris 2024. This is the power of the Olympic Movement, led by the IOC.”

“We felt so much relief. We had no fear. We felt safe.”

Track and field sprinter Kimia Yousofi, now in Australia, was the Afghanistan flag-bearer at the Tokyo Games. 

“We are so happy we are in a safe place,” she said. “That’s the best thing.”

She was asked a moment later for clarification – about what is the best thing: “The Taliban want me and other girls to give up on our dreams. We want to continue.” 

To be clear, IOC support has not been limited to those out of Afghanistan. In late 2021, the IOC approved an aid package of up to USD 560,000 to benefit up to 2,000 people in-country, USD 265 per person, with priority given to women and girls. Eligible: national sports team elite athletes and coaches, plus national federation officials still in Afghanistan. The IOC said it would work with the UNHCR to deliver the aid. 

Meanwhile, World University Services of Canada (WUSC)’s Student Refugee Programme had resettled three refugee athletes from Rio 2016: Rose Nathike Likonyen, Paulo Amotun Lokoro and James Nyang Chiengjiek. These three, as it happens, are also among the 44 Scholarship-holders aiming for Paris 2024.

Now WUSC stepped up to help Nigara Shaheen.

After Tokyo, Nigara returned to Peshawar, Pakistan. At the Games, she had injured her shoulder. Upon returning to Pakistan, she was not greeted with any accolades of any sort. None. She was hurt. And covered up from head to toe, afraid of retribution for competing at the Olympics with her hair uncovered. For months on end, she essentially did not leave the house, because it was deemed unsafe. 

“Look at me! I’m an Olympian! Look at what I have achieved,” she said, “and I can’t even show my face!”

She added, “For a year, I could not go out. A year. Me. My mom. My dad. We lived with my aunt. One year in Pakistan. I couldn’t train. I couldn’t study. I couldn’t do – anything.”

Consider: Nigara Shaheen, 29, already had a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in international trade and entrepreneurship. She is forever an Olympic athlete.

And she was locked away.  

Finally, WUSC called with the good news. In the late summer of 2023, Nigara Shaheen is due to receive a third degree, from Centennial College in Toronto, in international development. 

Paris 2024? “I’m trying my best. I think I’m much more prepared this time.”

None of it – nothing – would be possible without IOC and Olympic Solidarity support, she emphasises:

“There is a team. A support system. I belong to that team. I have,” she said, “a sense of belonging.”