Empowering Afghan female athletes shows ‘bravery and courage’ against the Taliban, says Malala
CNN
Malala Yousafzai tells CNN Sports that she wants more opportunities granted to Afghanistan’s elite female athletes and international sports organizations must show “bravery and courage” to fight the Taliban’s influence.
Malala Yousafzai has never stopped fighting for the rights of women, even after it almost cost the Nobel-Prize-winning activist her life. And in her latest rallying cry, Yousafzai wants more opportunities granted to Afghanistan’s elite female athletes, at a time when they have been forced into exile under the Taliban’s rule. For that to be the case, she says that international sports organizations must show “bravery and courage” against the radical Islamist group, which is not recognized by most countries around the world. “They can definitely find opportunities for these players to play, and this is a form of resistance against the Taliban when we empower the Afghan female athletes to be able to play,” Yousafzai told CNN Sports in an exclusive interview. According to the United Nations, Afghanistan under Taliban rule is the most repressive country in the world for women’s rights. Secondary schools are closed for girls, women are unable to attend universities, and male chaperones are required for any form of travel. In the four years since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, women have been unable to attend public spaces like parks and gyms, making it difficult even to leave their own homes. While riding a bus home from school in 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban or TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan) – a separate group which is the ideological twin of, and gets its name from, the Afghan Taliban, but is not directly a part of the group that rules Afghanistan. She has long spoken out about the plight facing women in Afghanistan, and at age 17 became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work as an education activist, two years after surviving the attempt on her life.
