Sunday, 29 August 2021

‘This is our final’: the team who led athletes’ escape from Afghanistan | Suzanne Wrack

A dedicated crew of people helped the women’s national football team and others flee the Taliban over two remarkable weeks

“We have been working like fingers on one hand, with different roles, and we came together as a big strong punch,” says the former captain and one of the founders of the Afghanistan women’s national football team, Khalida Popal. She is talking about the small team that pulled off the mission to evacuate 100-200 Afghan athletes and a number of individuals connected to them from the Hamid Karzai international airport in Kabul.

Across a two-week period those fingers worked tirelessly around the clock and across numerous time zones, tracking the real-time movements of the Taliban and military personnel on the ground to pull off what seemed completely impossible: to get a group of female football players, many teenagers, and a host of others, including family members, into the airport and on to planes.

Continue reading...

from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/38qOFTn

No comments:

Post a Comment

North Carolina judges back Republican colleague in bid to toss votes and overturn election

Appeals court sides with Jefferson Griffin, who lost supreme court election and wants thousands of ballots thrown out More than 65,000 peop...