Fahima hops around, with her arms in a defensive position she throws a straight punch, then a hook. At each blow the black punching bag sways, and the dull noise made by her fists echoes in the cavernous room. Until 2001 the Kabul national stadium was used by the Taliban for public executions of men and women. It now represents salvation for the first Afghan female boxers, a refuge from attacks in the city streets, from soldiers in tanks or at check-points and even by their own families.
They train hard, their hijabs moving with each jump, absorbing the sweat from their brows. “Hit harder, come on, hit!” shouts Fahima’s sister, 15- year-old Shabnam Rahimi, who is so skinny her gloves look enormous. Boxing seems an incompatible sport for her slim frame. Training is tough and made even more difficult by the many layers of clothes the girls are obliged to wear, including the veil. But what is at stake is of the greatest importance, with the magnetism that characterises special events such as the Olympics. For a year this vivacious group of girls has been dreaming of something all athletes aspire to and these are girls who experience challenges every day of their lives. Now that female boxing has been added to the 2012 London Olympic Games their dreams may come true.
They are trained by former heavy weight boxer, 25-year-old Tareq Shawl Azim, who left Afghanistan with his family after the 1979 Soviet invasion. “I knew that sooner or later I would return home,” he told the BBC. Tareq did more than that. “We had very few punching bags. Four to be precise and three were handmade. There were not enough for thirty athletes.” Tareq contacted Fairtex Gear Inc., a San Francisco based company, asking them to help with boxing equipment, to be supplied free of charge, for a female boxing team in Kabul. Those working at Fairtex must have fallen out of their chairs in surprise on reading the request and above all the location it came from, Afghanistan. But Tareq’s sporting curriculum worked as a guarantee and the punching bags arrived. Once the former slaughterhouse had been transformed into a gymnasium, all that remained to be done was to persuade or at least reassure the fathers of these young boxers.
All thirty girls told us they had experienced problems persuading their parents, although Tareq’s presence did help solve what initially appeared to be an insoluble problem. “They all come from poor families,” says Tareq’s assistant Saber Sharif, “rich families do not allow their daughters to come and box here.” It is a shame, because according to these Afghan Million Dollar Babies there are many advantages. “Since I started training” explained Shabam, who with her sister is one of those short-listed for London, “I feel far more self-confident. And boxing is also a lot of fun, not just for boys.” During the Taliban dark ages, women did not even have the right to think such things. “We women can do everything nowadays in Afghanistan” adds the young boxer.
Things have changed. In some ways the invasion by American and her allies has improved the lives of women, but there is still a great deal to be done. According to some, choosing boxing as one of the sports used to encourage female emancipation is a debatable choice. Teaching them jabs, hooks and punches is seen as inciting them to violence. “That is not exactly true,” they say at the CPAU, Cooperation for Peace and Unity, an NGO working in Afghanistan that sponsors female boxing. “We do not wish to encourage aggressiveness in girls. We wish to help them feel stronger and more self-confident through boxing. Through boxing it is easier to destroy the stereotype of Afghan women as submissive and hidden under a blue burqa. It is a sport that requires physical and mental tenacity and the ring is a metaphor for the challenges addressed every day by Afghan women.”
Translated by Francesca Simmons