Khalida Popal for The Wall Street Journal

Last week I met and photographed Khalida Popal, founder and former captain of the Afghan women’s soccer team for The Wall Street Journal.

In the hours after the Taliban seized Kabul, some 30 players reached out to Khalid Popal via phone asking for help as they needed to escape. In the following days Khalida Popal and a handful of friends from the women’s soccer world worked to evacuate the soccer players and their families. Together with a human rights lawyer and the general secretary of the international players union, Ms Popal was able to get asylum for the players in Australia. During their escape the athletes were beaten by the Taliban, assaulted amid the crowds, deprived of food, sleep and water for days before reaching their airplane in Kabul. 

I met and photographed Khalida Popal in Denmark where she has been living since a gunman approached her in Kabul traffic narrowly missing her.

Read the article by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson here