Running for their lives: How grassroots taekwondo community and football stars saved an Afghan women’s team

Ali Rahimi’s phone had rung late one night in August last year, the Melbourne-based taekwondo coach’s life, and several others, changing the instant he picked up.

On the other end was a representative of the Afghanistan women’s taekwondo team who had been hiding in Kabul along with seven of her teammates.

The Taliban had entered the country’s capital, the streets had been overrun with chaos and they didn’t know what to do.

Through the tears half a world away, Rahimi did his best to reassure them that everything would be OK. He didn’t dare make any promises, but gave one solemn vow. “I’ll do my best.”

Rahimi knew exactly how these girls felt because he had been in their position two decades earlier.

Originally from Afghanistan, Rahimi came to Australia in 2001. He also had no alternative but to flee from the Taliban.

“When the Taliban came in power in Afghanistan and took control, unfortunately, they started to kill all Hazara people and also those who have been active in sports and other activities,” Rahimi tells CodeSports.

“I was a taekwondo instructor so I had to leave the country and I came to Australia.

“It was hard to come over. But I was lucky to survive, I came here and I made it.”

Since moving to Australia, Rahimi has been back to Afghanistan once, in 2012. He saw first-hand the country’s progress after the turn of the century’s devastation.

It emphasised the helplessness he felt watching as the Taliban took over again in 2021, Rahimi this time taking it all in from his Melbourne living room.

“It was just heartbreaking,” he says.

“I was thinking about all the people over there. I was thinking about my friends and all the achievements they have done in the past 20 years in Afghanistan. In all areas, sport, education and other freedom for women and students.

“Everything was just destroyed overnight.”

Rahimi understood that Afghanistan had a strong taekwondo system and knew some of the members of the coaching team. But that one phone call that night changed everything.

The desperation he heard kicked his paternal instincts into gear. Young girls that he didn’t know minutes earlier, suddenly they became his whole world and he wouldn’t rest until they were safely out of the country.

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As soon as that first conversation ended, Rahimi started making calls of his own.

He rang local taekwondo associations, got in touch with the sport’s Victorian organisational body and eventually Heather Garriock, former Matildas midfielder and current CEO of Taekwondo Australia.

Garriock then reached out to Craig Foster, another former footballer who is a passionate human rights activist.

Foster had already helped numerous athletes get out of Afghanistan, most notably the women’s football team. Like many, he felt compelled to help fellow athletes who were devoid of options and found themselves in the middle of conflict.

“Seeing the images in the early part of the evacuation where a young footballer climbed onto the wheels of the overloaded plane and fell from several hundred metres in the sky … I think that image shocked the world and certainly the consciences of all Australians,” Foster says.

“Heather told me that she was in touch with eight women Afghan taekwondo players. She was extremely stressed because she knew the situation they were in.

“By this time, female athletes right across Afghanistan knew that Australia was a potential safe haven because it had been in the press, therefore a lot of people in control of sports or players unions or others in Australia were getting in touch with me and saying, ‘What can we do?’”

Athletes were turning to unions and people like Foster because they felt many sporting organisations were not providing the assistance they should be.

The fact Taekwondo Australia was so determined to be involved in this process put a lot of other high-profile bodies to shame.

“Not many sporting bodies or CEOs of sporting bodies at that time were trying to evacuate athletes,” Foster says.

“Sports protect administrators, so when the airport was falling and the evacuation was occurring, most sports evacuated their administrators.

“Sport doesn't care about the athletes. It only cares about the people who vote for and who sit on the board. So that was the really important point about Heather. I said to her, ‘Well done, it’s absolutely brilliant what you’re doing and you are setting a standard here for all of sport’.

“A month later, once the world realised that Australia was evacuating hundreds of women athletes, all of a sudden governing bodies like FIFA were under huge pressure to act, even though they were asked in the first week to act and did nothing.”

From that point, Foster used existing relationships with the Australian government to start the emergency visa process that was being prioritised for the most at-risk groups.

“That included young girls who were in danger of forced marriage or sexual slavery, [the] Hazara community, and particularly women at risk so judges, athletes [and] high-profile women in occupations or social positions that the Taliban were against,” Foster adds.

Using WhatsApp, the girls sent over whatever identification they could find, be it a national ID or a passport. Immigration Minister Alex Hawke and senator Nick McKim worked with Foster to get the visas approved in a short amount of time.

Unfortunately, that proved one of their easiest hurdles to clear.

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Rahimi was in contact with the girls every couple of hours as this process unfolded.

“Over four nights or more, we couldn’t sleep at all. I was calling the girls, the girls were calling me.”

Because the evacuation of the athletes was occurring later than many of the other Afghan women who had left for Australia, their options to get out of the country were extremely limited.

The women’s football team had been able to get on a flight from Kabul to Dubai before quarantining in Australia. With the airport closed, that was no longer an option.

What was left was an arduous drive to Chaman, one of the main border points between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Even harder was convincing the parents of these athletes that they would be in safe hands.

“When they were in the process of trying to get to Pakistan, several family members reached out to me,” Garriock says.

“Obviously one of the mothers of the youngest one, Fatima, she was beside herself and she wouldn‘t get out of bed.

“That has an emotional effect, I’m a mother of three children. One of the sisters [also] reached out and just gave her blessing and thanks.”

The dangerous journey to the Kandahar border was a necessary one. Throughout it, the girls grappled with the consequences of being discovered – “If the Taliban had found that they were going to Pakistan to get to Australia, then they would kill the girls,” Rahimi says.

The sense of urgency from the girls to get to Pakistan was evident. Garriock and Rahimi had to convince them to be patient and wait until they had all the official documentation from the Pakistan consulate – their lives depended on it.

“They continued to want to be impatient and just go to the border,” Garriock says.

“They had to find a male to drive them and they had full white burqas on, you could not see anything.

“But then there was a time we told them to stop, they couldn’t go further without the letter from the consulate. It took about three or four days to get across the line.”

Even waiting at the border, the risks were great. Travelling at night in an attempt to avoid Taliban checkpoints, they were then relying on complete strangers to help.

On the wall the words ‘Friendship-Gate’ were written to provide hope. In reality, the juxtaposition couldn’t have been greater.

“Every day there were shootings by Taliban officers at the gates, there was always threats of suicide bombs and other terrorist acts at the gates because the Taliban knew that many governments were trying to evacuate people covertly,” Foster says.

“They had to find places to stay locally and go back day after day after day to try again, each new attempt put them at extreme risk and it was just a horrendous situation.”

As they camped out waiting for the documentation to be approved, they could only dream of the life that awaited them in Australia.

On their third attempt to cross the border, the Pakistan air force refused entry to the girls despite the desperate plea that they were fleeing for their lives.

A late-night letter from Australian authorities at the Pakistan embassy to their counterparts was enough to see them through.

“One morning [Heather] called to say they got across and for everyone, there were thousands of Australians involved in this process trying to help people, and for each of us every time we got that call, that was a hugely emotional moment,” Foster says.

“When they arrived in Darwin I said ‘Thank God’ maybe 10 times,” Rahimi adds.

And a good night's sleep was finally had by all involved.

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Rahimi met the girls at Melbourne airport after their 14 days in Howard Springs. The relief of seeing them on the ground in Australia was immense.

It’s hard to tell who sported the larger smile.

“They thought everything was destroyed for them, but when they arrived here they got a new life,” Rahimi says.

“They have a new hope now.”

The majority of them are now living together in Melbourne, but the taekwondo coach was so connected to their plight that even though he had already helped get them to Australia, he wanted to do more.

He became the legal guardian of the youngest girl, Fatima, something that he and his wife had no hesitations about. He then helped them in the way he knows best, coaching them at his World Taekwondo Centre clinic in southeast Victoria.

Excitingly, 16-year-old Fatima has already shown promise since arriving in Australia.

“She starts going to school next term but she is in the Australian taekwondo camp training,” Rahimi says. “I’m sure she is going to be a star here in Australia.

“The other seven girls, they are going to start training with the Victorian section of the Australian camp by the end of April.”

Garriock was always eager to get involved with getting the athletes to Australia, but the fact they have already thrown themselves back into the sport is the most heartening result.

“Australian taekwondo wants to be able to support them through their journey [and] we consider them part of the family,” Garriock says.

“It makes my heart so happy, so proud that she‘s able to do what she loves. And for the others we’ll be there to support them regardless if they’re going to go for the high performance programs or not.”

Rahimi adds: “They all were saying, we couldn’t make a career in Afghanistan so we’re going to make it here in Australia and for Australia.”

While representing Australia remains a clear goal, outside of taekwondo the group are adjusting to life in Australia well. They have enrolled in a course at a local TAFE to learn English, a path that Rahimi himself took when he moved to Australia two decades earlier.

The local sporting community has also embraced them with open arms. Local sport, like it always has, has functioned as a quasi-family ready to help people in their time of need.

“I’m proud of our taekwondo community, a lot of instructors said that they could step up and help,” Rahimi says.

“I got lots of phone calls, messages, emails from all over the country – instructors, referees, all other friends – they all rang me and called me.

“They’ve settled. It was hard but everything has gone okay.”

Still, fear remains for the athletes’ families stuck in Afghanistan, where an uncertain future awaits. The hope is that, one day, they too can be expedited to join their daughters.

Once again, the taekwondo community is ready to step up and help.

“It would be such an amazing gift to be able to give their families for them to be reunited with their children,” Garriock says. “Because they’re in a very unsafe environment.”