Afghanistan's Women's Footballers: Abuse, Exile and Recognition

Timeline

1. 2007Afghanistan's women's national team is formed.
2. Nov 2018The Guardian publishes players' allegations of abuse by federation president Keramuddin Karim.
3. Jun 8, 2019FIFA bans Karim for life and fines him 1 million Swiss francs.
4. Jul 2020The Court of Arbitration for Sport dismisses Karim's appeal.
5. Aug 2021The Taliban take power; players and families are evacuated, many to Australia.
6. Mar 2022Australia-based players join a league in Victoria as a club team.
7. May 2025FIFA approves a pilot Afghan women's refugee team.
8. Oct–Nov 2025Afghan Women United plays in the FIFA Unites: Women's Series in Morocco.
9. Apr 2026FIFA and the AFC approve rules allowing the players to represent Afghanistan in official matches.

The ethical issues

• Safeguarding: protecting players from abuse by the head of their own federation.
• Enforcement: what a life ban means when the accused evades arrest.
• Human rights: the Taliban ban on women's sport and the evacuation of athletes.
• Governance: FIFA rules that tie national teams to member federations.
• Representation: who has the right to play for a country.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder	Interests & obligations
Afghan women players	Safety, justice and the right to represent their country.
Khalida Popal and player advocates	Recognition and support for the team in exile.
Afghanistan Football Federation	Its authority as FIFA member and relationship with the Taliban.
FIFA and the AFC	Consistent rules, human rights commitments and credibility.
Host countries such as Australia	Support for refugee athletes.
Women and girls in Afghanistan	Access to sport and public life.

The case

Afghanistan’s women’s national team was formed in 2007, drawing players from schoolgirls in Kabul. It played its first official match in 2010. For many players, simply appearing in public in sports clothing carried risk.^[1] By 2016, with coaches Kelly Lindsey and Haley Carter and program director Khalida Popal, a former captain, the team had greater support.^[1]

Background

Women’s football in Afghanistan took shape during the Islamic Republic era. The national team was formed in 2007 by the Afghanistan National Olympic Committee, which drew players from selected schoolgirls in Kabul.^[1] The early program relied on outside help. In 2008 the team held a preparation camp in Germany and played at the Islamic Countries Women’s Football Tournament in Jordan. In 2010 the Danish sportswear brand Hummel sponsored Afghanistan’s men’s, women’s and youth teams.^[1]

Results were secondary to visibility. At the 2010 SAFF Women’s Championship in Bangladesh, Afghanistan’s first major tournament, the team lost its first official match to Nepal 13–0.^[1] The players were nonetheless highly public figures in a country where playing at all could invite harassment, which made their federation’s leaders, the people meant to protect them, unusually powerful in their lives.

That power was concentrated in one man. Keramuddin Karim, also spelled Keram, had been president of the Afghanistan Football Federation since 2004 and served as governor of Panjshir Province from 2010 to 2013.^[4] The case is therefore about more than one abuser. It shows how weak oversight, deference to a politically connected official, and the players’ dependence on the federation for their careers combined in a setting where reporting abuse carried real danger.

The rules and governance

Football’s international system runs through member associations. FIFA recognizes one federation per country, and only that federation can enter national teams in official competitions.^[1][8] FIFA’s Code of Ethics allows its independent ethics committee to investigate and sanction football officials, including with lifetime bans, and those decisions can be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.^[2][3] Criminal prosecution stays a matter for national authorities. That division mattered here: FIFA could remove Karim from football, but only Afghan authorities could arrest him.

The same structure later became the obstacle to the players’ return. Because the Afghanistan Football Federation refused to recognize a women’s team made up of diaspora or local players after 2021, the women had no federation to enter them in official competition. Any solution required FIFA to change its own rules or create an exception.^[1]

The abuse allegations

In November 2018, members of the team gave the Guardian detailed accounts of sexual and physical abuse. They named the federation’s president, Keramuddin Karim, a former provincial governor. Afghanistan’s attorney general opened an investigation, and Karim and four other federation officials were suspended.^[2]

FIFA said it had begun investigating in March 2018. But the Guardian reported that emails from Afghan provincial football leaders had alerted FIFA and Asian football officials to possible abuse as early as April 2017. FIFA said those claims had proved difficult to verify.^[2]

On June 8, 2019, the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s independent Ethics Committee found Karim, a former member of a FIFA standing committee, guilty of “having abused his position and sexually abused various female players.” The investigation concerned complaints from at least five players, who accused him of repeated sexual abuse between 2013 and 2018.^[9] The chamber found that he had breached the Code of Ethics articles on “protection of physical and mental integrity” and “abuse of position.” It banned him for life from all football-related activity, national and international, and fined him one million Swiss francs.^[2][9] Karim denied the allegations.^[2] On July 14, 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed his appeal.^[10] Players testified from a secure location using voice scramblers. The panel said his offenses “violated basic human rights” and warranted the most severe sanction available.^[3] It contrasted them with bribery and match-fixing, which damage the integrity of the sport. Karim’s offenses, it said, “damaged the mental and physical dignity and integrity of young female players.” “With his appalling acts,” the panel added, “he had destroyed not only their careers, but severely damaged their lives.”^[10] An Afghan arrest warrant was issued, but Karim was never detained. He later pledged allegiance to the Taliban.^[4]

The Taliban and exile

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, they banned women from sport. Popal urged players to delete photos and burn their kits. With help from the players’ union FIFPRO and several governments, players and their families were evacuated, many to Australia.^[1][5] In 2022, players in Melbourne began competing as a club team in Victoria.^[1]

Under FIFA rules, national teams must be run by member federations. The Afghanistan Football Federation did not support a women’s team, so the players could not compete as Afghanistan. In 2023, they had to withdraw from Olympic qualifying.^[1][8]

Recognition

In May 2025, FIFA approved a pilot refugee team, later called Afghan Women United. It played Chad, Tunisia and Libya in a FIFA tournament in Morocco in late 2025.^[1][6] In April 2026, the FIFA Council amended its governance regulations. In coordination with the Asian Football Confederation, this allows these players to represent Afghanistan in official international matches, with FIFA handling their registration.^[7]

Aftermath

The arrest warrant against Karim proved hard to enforce. In August 2020, Afghan special forces tried and failed to arrest him in Panjshir, and Human Rights Watch reported that he was protected by a local militia. He remained at large and pledged allegiance to the Taliban after their 2021 takeover.^[4]

Evacuating the players required coordination with authorities from six countries, which Khalida Popal and FIFPRO helped arrange.^[1] Players in exile kept playing. In addition to the Melbourne team, an Afghan development side played a friendly against Surrey, a non-FIFA team, in Dorking, England, in May 2022.^[1] FIFA’s May 2025 decision created the refugee team on a one-year pilot basis under coach Pauline Hamill. It played in the FIFA Unites: Women’s Series in Morocco in October and November 2025 before the April 2026 decision allowed the squad to represent Afghanistan in official matches.^[1][7]

In June 2026 the squad, made up of players displaced across the world, reunited in Auckland for two matches against the Cook Islands, losing 1–0 and 3–0. It was the team’s first training camp since the FIFA Council’s April amendment. The Oceania Football Confederation described the amendment as “opening the door” to future official internationals and FIFA competitions.^[11]

The core dilemma

The players first had to expose abuse by the man who ran their federation, then flee a government that banned them from playing. FIFA’s system assumes national federations represent their athletes. What should a global governing body do when a member federation abuses its players or refuses to support them?

Competing values

• Member autonomy vs. athlete rights: FIFA’s deference to national federations against players’ right to compete.
• Due process vs. protection: fair procedures for the accused against urgent action for victims.
• Neutrality vs. human rights: staying out of politics against confronting a ban on women’s sport.
• Consistency vs. exception: uniform eligibility rules against a unique situation.

Strongest arguments

For decisive action: the players faced abuse and then persecution. FIFA’s statutes include commitments to human rights and against discrimination, and a rule that lets a federation silence its women’s team undermines those commitments.

For caution: bypassing a member federation sets a precedent that could be used in other political disputes. FIFA also had to verify serious allegations under difficult conditions.

Applying the frameworks

Care ethics

Care ethics starts from relationships and vulnerability. The players depended on the federation for selection, travel and safety, and in a society where women’s sport was contested, they had few places to turn. The lens asks what those with power over them owed: protection, believing their reports, and acting quickly. It directs particular scrutiny at the period after the April 2017 emails, and at whether FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation responded with the urgency the relationship required.

Rights-based

A rights lens focuses on bodily integrity, freedom from discrimination and the right to participate. The CAS panel itself described Karim’s conduct as violating “basic human rights.” After 2021, the Taliban’s ban on women’s sport raised a different rights question. Should a governing body’s membership rules, which tie national teams to federations, give way when a federation refuses to let women play at all? The lens supports the 2026 exception, though some will ask whether it sets a precedent that is hard to apply consistently.

Justice & fairness (Rawls)

From behind a veil of ignorance, not knowing whether you would be a male player, a female player or an official, would you accept a system in which one federation’s refusal can erase a women’s team from international football? Distributive justice also asks how resources are shared. The players’ evacuation and recognition depended on unions, foreign governments and volunteers rather than on the institutions that collect football’s revenue.

Walk it through: the Simple Decision Model

1. Spot the issue. You are a FIFA official receiving the April 2017 emails from Afghan provincial football leaders. The stakeholders are the players and their families, the federation, FIFA and the AFC, Afghan authorities, coaches, sponsors and fans. The less visible ones are future players deterred from joining. The codes in play are the FIFA Code of Ethics and its safeguarding duties.
2. Gather facts. What could be verified at the time, and what could not? Which risks did investigating create for the players? Watch for deference bias toward a sitting federation president and governor.
3. Test options. Options: (a) wait for verifiable evidence; (b) open a confidential inquiry with protective measures for witnesses; (c) provisionally suspend officials while investigating. Test each against harm to players, duties to the accused, and the virtues of courage and prudence.
4. Check codes and law. Check what the ethics code allows by way of provisional measures, and what a duty of care requires beyond the letter of the procedures.
5. Decide and document. Record the rationale for timing, the protections offered to witnesses, and who was consulted, such as safeguarding experts and players’ unions.
6. Communicate and follow up. How and when should findings be published without endangering witnesses? What safeguarding controls should member associations be required to adopt, and how would FIFA audit them?

What’s settled and what’s contested

• Settled: Karim’s life ban and its confirmation by CAS; the Taliban ban on women’s sport; FIFA’s 2025 and 2026 decisions.
• Contested: whether FIFA acted quickly enough on early warnings; how the new arrangement will work in practice; whether the federation should face sanctions.

Why this case matters

Afghanistan’s women’s footballers show how safeguarding and human rights failures can compound. Their case tests whether sports governance can protect athletes when both their federation and their government fail them.

Key terms

Duty of care

The responsibility of coaches, organizations and institutions to protect the health, safety and well-being of those in their charge. It is not a license for total control.

Whistleblowing

Disclosure of wrongdoing in the public interest by someone inside or close to an organization: a moral safety valve.

Institutional accountability

Structures that make a sport organization explain its decisions and face consequences: clear authority, transparency, appeals, independent oversight and enforcement.

Corruption

The misuse of entrusted power for private gain, whether financial, sporting, administrative or cultural.

Distributive justice

Fairness in how scarce opportunities, resources, benefits and burdens are shared.

Definitions from the Ethics Cases glossary.

Discussion questions

1. Players took great personal risks to report abuse by their federation's president. What should FIFA have done earlier when warnings reached it?
2. FIFA banned Karim for life, but he was never arrested. How effective are sporting sanctions without state enforcement?
3. Should FIFA have suspended the Afghanistan Football Federation when it would not support a women's team? Why or why not?
4. Who should decide who represents a country: a national federation, the athletes, or the international body?
5. What do sports organizations owe athletes whose government bans them from playing?

Sources

1. Afghanistan women's national football team — Wikipedia
2. Afghanistan's football president banned for life for sexual abuse — The Guardian
3. Former Afghan football president's life ban for abusing female players upheld — The Guardian
4. Keramuddin Keram — Wikipedia
5. Afghan women footballers removed from danger and taken to Australia — Sky Sports
6. Afghan women's refugee team allowed to play in FIFA tournaments — Associated Press
7. FIFA and AFC enable Afghan women to represent their country in official matches through landmark governance reform — FIFA
8. Afghanistan women's team representing a country that doesn't recognise them — BBC Sport
9. Adjudicatory chamber of the independent Ethics Committee sanctions Mr Keramuudin Karim (June 8, 2019) — FIFA
10. Media release: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) confirms the life ban imposed on Keramuddin Karim (July 14, 2020) — Court of Arbitration for Sport
11. Cook Islands tests mark next chapter for Afghan Women United (June 8, 2026) — Oceania Football Confederation