Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team, woke up on the floor of her apartment near Copenhagen, drenched in sweat and shaking.
She had collapsed and couldn’t speak. An ambulance rushed to her.
It was two years ago last month, and the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan. Female soccer players on the national team Popal helped create in 2007 were desperate to leave the country, fearing that the Taliban would kill them for playing the sport.
Players were deluging Popal with requests for help, and she felt smothered by guilt. For more than 15 years, much of that period spent in exile, she had encouraged Afghan girls to participate in all areas of society, including sports, jobs and education.
The message was everything the Taliban despised.
“I feel responsible for these girls,” Popal said later. “I’d rather die than turn my back on them.”
So on that blue-sky summer afternoon in 2021, Popal had a panic attack and thought she might be dying. But in a show of her resilience in a life marked by trauma, she waved away the medical workers and returned to her desk to continue coordinating an evacuation of players and their families from Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Relying on a network she built through her activism, she helped…
