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Afghan women prepare for Athens Olympics
At Afghanistan's national stadium in Kabul, girls in black outfits line the concrete running track, practicing kung fu kicks. Nearby, others play basketball in jeans and headscarfs.
Robina Muqimyar, a 17-year-old high school student who runs the 100 meters, won't win a medal; her best time is more than 3 seconds off the world record.
But merely crouching in the starting blocks during the Aug. 13-29 Olympics will be a triumph for a nation nursing the wounds of decades of conflict and where many religious conservatives still object to female athletes.
"If women take part in the Olympics, it shows this country is progressing," said Neema Soratgar, a women's sports activist who is expected to carry the Afghan flag at the opening ceremony in Athens.
The Islamic country's gradual return to international competition was heralded at track and field's world championships in Paris last August, when Lima Azimi competed in the 100 meters.
Wearing long, baggy pants and unsure how to use the starting blocks, Azimi finished last in 18.37 seconds, 7 seconds behind the winner.
Soratgar, a volleyball and basketball player, used to run secret exercise classes for women during the Taliban era ¡ª moving to the rhythm of music that was also banned by the fundamentalist Islamic regime. She has been at the forefront of restarting women's sports clubs since the Taliban was ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001.
Within weeks the Taliban's fall, Soratgar was running exercise sessions for housewives at a high school gym.
"Rejoining the Olympic movement is an important part of Afghanistan being a proper country again," added Stig Traavik, who competed for Norway in judo at the 1992 Games and now advises the Afghan National Olympic Committee.
On a spring day at the national stadium ¡ª where the soccer field is scarred by the memory of public executions under Taliban rule ¡ª 18 girls do kung fu moves under their trainer's watch.
Green belt Rahima Hosseni, 14, who got interested in kung fu as a refugee in Iran, pirouettes and punches the air.
"It might seem strange to some men that I do kung fu, but I don't care," said Khadija Shuja-ee, 18.
She's a trainee policewoman and said she took up kung fu four months ago to learn how to protect herself.
"The situation is a lot better now than it was under the Taliban," she said.
Still, there are those who object.
Abdul Matin Mutasem Bilal, a mullah at Kabul's Abu Bakar Sidiq Mosque, said no Afghan women should go to the Olympics, arguing that the strict Islamic dress code requires that all but a woman's hands, feet and face be covered. "When I tell you that her neighbor shouldn't see all her face, how should thousands of foreigners, non-Muslims, in a big stadium, be allowed to see her body?" he said. Zia Dashti, the Afghan Olympic committee's vice president, is sensitive to such concerns. "We don't care so much about the headscarf, but wearing a tracksuit is important. A woman athlete cannot show her legs," he said. "If that happens, mullahs will complain that we are sending women to run without clothes." Afghanistan, which has never won an Olympic medal, was banned from the 2000 Sydney Olympics (news - web sites) because the Taliban regime outlawed women from sports. The country participated in the 1996 Atlanta Games, but years of war robbed its athletes of most training facilities. Traavik said Afghanistan sports authorities don't have complete records, but it appears that no Afghan woman has appeared at the Olympics ¡ª although a generation ago, it was a relatively liberal society where women took part in sports. "Twenty-five years ago, Afghanistan was not what it is now," said Aqala Shirzad, 46, a physical education teacher at a Kabul high school. "We were able to compete freely."
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