Women Onside launches Afghan Football Support Network to assist Afghanistan refugees

An undisclosed number of refugees have arrived under the promised 3000 spots set aside from those fleeing the Taliban. A number of players from the Afghan national women's soccer team are among them, along with their families, but the specifics remain under wraps because of visa statuses and fears of retaliation on loved ones stuck in their homeland.

A number of organisations are working to try and support the newly-arrived refugees, and as soccer is one of Afghanistan's favourite sports, the code is playing a big part.

Australia's Women Onside has founded the Afghan Football Support Network to provide financial and social support to the female players in Australia. So far more than $12,000 - of their $20,000 goal - has been raised and more than 100 people have have signed up to offer their help in non-financial ways.

Women Onside director Asma Mirzae understands the circumstances better than most, having come to Australia more than a decade ago as a refugee from Afghanistan.

After she arrived, she got involved in a soccer program aimed at young refugees in Melbourne and it helped break down some of the barriers she faced, and empowered her.

"Football was one of those really powerful drivers that really helped me resettle and make Australia home," she said.

"As a newly-arrived refugee in Australia, you are confronted with a lot of challenges - language, social, economical - and the whole idea around having a sense of belonging to the new community."

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The stories coming out of Afghanistan anecdotally and through the media paint a scary picture for female athletes in the country, and Australia's sporting associations have been working overtime to do their part to get a number of them out and like WO, support them.

Football Australia, alongside other prominent Australian voices in sport, have called on the federal government to increase the 3000 places to accommodate more Afghan refugees.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is advocating to increase the 3000 figure to 20,000 visas, in a similar move to the 12,000 visas given to Syrian refugees in 2015.

Australia accepts 13,750 refugees each year and has set aside 3000 of those visas for Afghan refugees. However other countries, such as the UK, US and Canada, have committed to a combined 70,000 visas.

Mirzae said it would likely be a while before the players shared their stories publicly, due to the trauma and uncertainty, but the time would come.

"With the situation that was unfolding in Afghanistan, it was very distressing. I felt very powerless - hopeless - because obviously we can't really do anything from the other side of the world other than raising awareness," she said.

"My experience is nowhere near what this girls had to go through because the things that they had to deal with, just to be able to get evacuated, was horrific and I can't comprehend or relate to that."

As the players begin to settle into their new home, AFSN is looking to be by their side to provide supplies and support in the short term, but also has a long-term support vision for them and their families.

Fellow driver of the AFSN with Mirzae, Anne Bunde-Birouste, said the thing that had created the original connection, the world game, was also being grappled with by some of the players.

"I can't even count the number of times, I mean thousands if not more, where I've just seen the magic of the pitch bring people together," she said.

"But one of the potential things with this group is because football was initially their passage to a different kind of life under a repressive regime, and then became, I guess you would say, the cause for them being very much in danger with their families, and then their passage out in a sense. There's a lot going on emotionally with all of that, and we have heard anecdotally that a couple have said they don't want to play football at the moment.

"So it's going to be the next six months year or two years even, not to mention the material settlement issues but the trauma and helping the women and their families, and all of the evacuees really come to terms with everything. Because most of them still have multiple branches of family stuck back in Afghanistan and they don't know what's going to be happening, so the network idea was always, how can we help them initially and how can we maintain support ongoing."

Bunde-Birouste is the founder of refugee community football organisation Football United and the director of Streetfootballworld.

It was through these channels, and other Women Onside members' connections, the network was conceived as they were contacted about the effort to bring the players to Australia.

"We were able to be connected to the girls, not necessarily in a seamless or fluid way, but from the time they actually got on the evacuation planes, so we were able to follow them through the whole process of landing and trying to help them figure out what was happening. So the initial days were quite busy and full of a lot of uncertainty," she said.

"We all knew that the evacuation was going to be scary and really a traumatising time for them, and imagine them having to go then from that to hotel quarantine which was super scary and most of them didn't have any English and they weren't getting a lot of contact regularly from the authorities.

"We're actually hoping that it's not just support, but friendship and engagement with a sport we love, which brought us all together."

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