Taliban sports ban: Afghan women take a stand

The Taliban's takeover of power has meant wide-ranging restrictions on Afghan women's freedom. This includes a ban on sport. Some women have taken a stand against this – and had their sports equipment photographed anonymously.

  • A former women's football team in Kabul, Afghanistan. They all wear burkas and all hold a ball in their hands
  • A young woman with skateboard and burka in Kabul, Afghanistan
    Offboard: this young skateboarder poses in a burka with her skateboard. The Taliban have not only banned all sports for women and girls and forbidden them access to parks and gyms, but also intimidate women who continue to practice their sport with visits and threatening phone calls
  • A woman in a burka and boxing gloves poses with her medals and trophies
    Technical knockout: Noura, a 20-year-old martial artist, remembers the day the Taliban entered Kabul: She was competing in a tournament in a Kabul gym that day, she says. When word spread among the spectators that the Taliban had reached the suburbs of Kabul, all the women and girls fled from the hall. It was to be her last tournament
  • A young Thai boxer in Kabul wearing a burka and boxing gloves
    Put to flight: Noura is a fighter. She grew up in a poor district of Kabul and has always stood her ground against the odds. But when she and her family were threatened by the Taliban, she fled Kabul in fear and hid for a few weeks in her parents' home province. "Ever since the Taliban returned, I have felt dead," she said
  • A woman in a burka on a racing bike
    Stopped in her tracks: like this female cyclist, many women in Afghanistan are currently being systematically thwarted by the Taliban: they have been banned from attending schools and universities, they have to cover their entire bodies in public and the opportunities for women to work outside the home have been severely curtailed
  • A young female basketball player stands in a burka on a public basketball court in Kabul
    Game over: even basketball is out of the question for this young woman in Kabul. The spokesperson of the Taliban's National Olympic Committee had announced that the authorities were planning new sports facilities to enable women to participate in sports again. However, similar statements had also been made regarding girls' attendance at middle and high schools, yet so far nothing has happened