By: Somaya Mandgar
Every year, as the cooler temperatures take hold, Band-e-Sabzak (Sabzak Lake) freezes over with a thick layer of ice – and becomes the perfect rink. People from the local Bamyan province would come down to the lake to run, dance and play on the frozen lake. One of the games was curling, where participants push flat stones along the surface into a designated ring to score a goal.
That was before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.
Zahra*, 23, used to wait impatiently for the cold season to arrive and the ice to set so her and her friends could curl. They used to play for days and days. With each match, Zahra was improving her curling skills – and dreaming of going into international competitions. But those dreams, along with the fledgling sport in Afghanistan, were short-lived. In nearly two years since the Taliban take over of Afghanistan, the sport has almost completely disappeared in Bamyan. Most of those who played it were girls, for whom sport is no longer “permitted”.
The situation still feels unbelievable to Zahra. “My winter has been spent in regret and staying inside at home,” she says.
Curling was only recently introduced in Afghanistan, but Zahra says her and other Bamyan girls quickly gained a foothold in the sport with easy access to ice to practice for the long cold months. Curling soon gained a special place in the province’s winter sports festivals.
Zahra and her other teammates managed to get the curling equipment through their own financial resources due to their great enthusiasm for the sport. The makeshift ice rink of Band-e-Sabzak was dedicated to curling on Thursdays and Fridays. And even when it snowed and the ice disappeared, they would work to clear the snow for their rink.
Zahra tells Rukhshana Media that fear of the Taliban has stopped her and her friends from continuing to play, even casually among themselves. “They took away our motivation and passion, and I don’t understand what to do,” she says. “I am suffering from fatigue without any reason.”
For Sama*, 20, another female curling athlete, the last two years have been “black” – a long period of pain and darkness. “The current situation is tiring, depressing, sad, and painful,” she says.
Sama joined the Bamyan curling team in the winter of 2018. In only two years, she saw the sport’s popularity grow and it was picking up in other provinces. From 20 athletes, Sama won silver medal in three inter-team competitions in Bamyan. “If the Taliban had not come, in the next two years we would have been provided with better conditions and maybe even held inter-provincial competitions,” she says. “We were planning on going on foreign trips for more training and competitions.”
She says the Olympics was the goal. “We dreamed of competing in the international arena one day and waving the flag of our country,” she adds. “We had thousands of dreams like this in our hearts.”
Farahnaz*, 23, was one of the top curling players in Bamyan. She says not only did curling allow her to play a sport she loved, but it also brought friendships. This is one of the losses from being banned from the sport. “We curling girls had become very close to each other and we didn’t even think that we would be separated one day,” she says.
Farahnaz now does not know where all her teammates and friends are and in what conditions they are living. “When I see the ice, I remember the game of curling and how we used to play. I feel so sad thinking about what we were and what we have become,” she says.
Sama says the curling practice out on the mighty Bamyan ice lakes was enriching. “We were full of happiness. The environment was a place where we calmed our minds. They were empty of negative thoughts. and our worries would disappear,” she says. “But now there is no hope and no future.”
Fahima*, 25, joined the Bamyan curling team at the beginning of 2019. “When I went to see the curling game, I really liked it. After that, I joined the team with the help of one of the girls.”
Fahima spent a month – about eight training sessions – learning and acquiring the skills to join the games. She got to know the rules, learned techniques, and gained skills. “Curling was very attractive and pleasant for me,” she says.”It was a sport that made me feel happy and refreshed when I was engaged in it. But after the arrival of the Taliban, we could no longer practice because it was forbidden for girls to exercise,” she adds.
Fahima does not know when she will be able to step on the curling rink again. She wonders aloud about what goes through her mind these days. “When will our hopes and dreams be fulfilled? Only when we leave this world and are buried under the dirt?”
Manawar Shah Shahzad, 33, and head of the Afghanistan Curling Federation, who now lives in Mannheim, Germany, tells Rukhshana Media that curling started in Bamyan in 2017. By the time of the fall of the republican government to the Taliban, about fifty girls from Kabul and Bamyan had become members of the sport federation.
Mr. Shahzad says the sport seemed to particularly attract the women seeing as it was considered more suitable for them. They also had more female fans interested in the game. This is why, with the Taliban ban on women playing sport, curling has all but disappeared from Afghanistan.
He says he knows of some girls trying to practice in secret, but its very hard to keep up any regular sport or training under the circumstances.
The International Olympic Committee has spoken out against the restrictions imposed by the Taliban on women’s participation in sport. The Committee said in a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland that “the presence of the Afghan National Olympic Committee delegation in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games depends on the access of Afghan women and girls to sports.”
Human Rights Watch has also highlighted the threat to female athletes in Afghanistan, calling on the international community to act.
Note: The names of the interviewees in this report have been chosen as pseudonyms.
