Afghan girls deserve football freedom

Members of the Afghanistan girls' national football team were "footsteps from freedom" when an Isis suicide bomber launched the deadly attack on Kabul international airport last week and stopped them leaving the country. Now the girls aged 14 to 16 are in hiding and waiting desperately to be rescued from the Taliban whose strict adherence to Islamic law bans the existence of female sports teams. Most of the national women's team flew out on Tuesday last week, following an arrangement with the Australian government. But the youth team, consisting of 26 players and more than 100 family members and other adults and children were unable to get flights because they lacked passports and the required documentation. Now, like so many other girls and women who have been free to play sports and take up public positions in the last 20 years, the teenage football players are moving addresses every night to avoid being targeted by the Taliban. An operation codenamed Soccer Balls is underway to try and get the girls and their families out safely. One of those behind the plan to rescue the girls is Robert McCreary, a former White House official under President George W Bush. "We need to do everything we can to protect them, to get them to a safe situation," he said. There have been five attempts to bring them out in the last few days. They were "footsteps from freedom" when the suicide bomber killed more than 180 people on Thursday last week, Farkhunda Muhtaj, captain of the Afghanistan women's football team, said. Muhtaj who lives in Canada, said: "They are devastated." The girls are now counting on an international effort to help them leave Afghanistan. "If we put a protective bubble around these women and girls I really believe the world will stand up and take notice and have a lot of offers to take them in and host them," McCreary said. He said the US had helped these girls to go to school and play football as part of the effort to improve the rights of women in the country. "They should not be in harm"s way for things that we helped them do," he said. During the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, girls were forbidden to attend school. It's not clear yet whether the Taliban, having regained power, will revive the total ban on education for girls.