When Nazira Khairzad, former goalkeeper of the Afghan Women’s National Soccer Team, flew out of Germany, she risked never being allowed back in. On October 31st, she and her sister, Nazima, were three days out from the Ultra-Trail du Mont-blanc, a technical 26-kilometer race through Mallorca’s Serra de Tramuntana mountains. Nazira’s legs were still sore from the marathon she’d run the week before. But as she waited to display her refugee travel document to the security officer at Frankfurt am Main, Nazira had bigger concerns on her mind.
Nazira’s status in Germany is tenuous. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, she fled to Italy, where she obtained asylum. In 2023, she moved to Frankfurt, reuniting with her family after nearly two years of separation. After over a year of waiting, her asylum application was processed–and then, rejected. By EU law, refugees can’t apply for asylum in two countries. A non-resident, Nazira now straddles a bureaucratic contradiction. “Exclusion of deportation (Duldung),” it says in German on her ID. And under that: “No residence permit! The holder is required to leave the country!”
Nazira is not alone. According to the Federal Statistics Office, over 177,000 others have duldung, which means something like “toleration.” Similar to the U.S.’s Temporary Protected Status, Germany’s duldung shields holders from deportation while denying them residency. Duldung may be issued to people without passports or documents, people who are too sick to travel, or people who face danger at home. As soon as the grounds for duldung go away, the German government may revoke its protections. In other words, duldung offers some safety–but only for as long as Germany deems it necessary.
On the day of her flight, Nazira took little comfort in her tolerated status. She turned to her sister in line for security and said, “What about if the police catch me?”
Nazira is used to hiding. As a young girl, she and her sister started the first girls’ soccer team in their native Bamiyan, a city in central Afghanistan. They snuck off to early morning practices multiple times a week, telling their parents they were going to an English class that met before school. Mostly in secret, Nazira’s love for sports took hold. At 11, she won a 10k, crossing the finish line in a long dress and tattered sandals. Her parents only discovered she ran when, after a race, she was broadcast on their home TV.
Born in 2004, Nazira came of age after U.S.-led coalition forces ousted the Taliban regime. In the two decades that followed, women ran, swam, and biked in triathlons abroad. Powerlifters won gold medals in India and Kazakhstan. The Afghan Women’s National Team formed in 2007, and won its first international match in 2012. By 2013, female Afghan athletes had accumulated some 100 medals. Through running, soccer, and skiing, Nazira added to that tally. As a female athlete, she was a minority in a conservative culture. But for most of her life, she was safe.
That changed in early 2021, when the Taliban started to gain control of the provinces surrounding Kabul. One night, Nazira woke up to her phone ringing. It was a driver from Free to Run, the organization that sponsored Nazira’s first race, offering to help her escape. Talib soldiers had entered Bamiyan, he said while calling from the city center.
In recent months, violence had escalated in Bamiyan for the first time since the Taliban’s regime. In September of 1998, Taliban soldiers first entered Bamiyan and killed an estimated 500 people. Three years later, the group exploded the towering Buddhas of Bamiyan, hollowing out a cliff the height of a ten-story building. This history fresh in her mind, Nazira pushed a desk in front of her door. She changed into a long black dress, threw clothes into a small suitcase, and gathered the trophies, medals, and certificates that adorned her room, tying them up in a tapestry.
For hours, Nazira paced the room, scared that Taliban soldiers were waiting outside her door. Her soccer teammates, many of whom ended up escaping into the mountains surrounding the valley city of Bamiyan, called to ask where she would flee. At around 4:30 in the morning, her father called to tell her their neighbors were driving to Kabul. “You should go with them,” she recalls him saying.
When Nazira got to Kabul, she joined her sister Nazima, who’d left home months earlier, in the basement room she was renting with several other women. For months, they shared a twin bed, their heads resting on opposite ends of a top-bunk mattress. It was around this time that Nazima–an athlete with a unique hunger for adventure–ventured into the black market. She’d won a scholarship to study in Malaysia, and needed a visa so she could travel to Pakistan for her appointment at the embassy (there is no Malaysian embassy in Afghanistan). Between odd meetings with a network of fixers, she traveled around the country, giving tours to English-speaking tourists. In May of 2021 she moved to Pakistan, narrowly escaping her country’s fall to the Taliban. Meanwhile, Nazira joined the Afghan Women’s National Team as a goalkeeper and started training for a match in Tajikistan, set for the end of August.
These plans were upended on August 15th, 2021, when the Taliban reached Kabul. As a high-profile female athlete, Nazira was especially at risk. During this time, photos were circulating online of Mahjabin Hakimi, a volleyball player, her head severed from her body. The message was clear: women in sports should fear for their lives.
Nazira took refuge with her ski coach, Gul Hussain Baizada. Through his work as a tour guide, Baizada had contacts outside the country who he said could help them flee. Nazira called her parents from the airport. “If you stay in Afghanistan,” she recalls them telling her on the phone, “the Taliban will kill you.”
It was family, not escape, that brought Nazira to Germany. After the Taliban took over Afghanistan, she fled to Italy with her ski coach. In a matter of months, she obtained asylum and made plans to take college courses, and in February of 2023, earned a spot on AC Milan. “I see football like a member of my parents, like my brother or sister,” she said in her introductory video for the team. “I cannot live without football.”
But just when she started gaining a sense of stability in Italy, everything changed. Her sister, Nazima–who went to Germany on a short-term Schengen visa, after her visa to Malaysia was denied–had been dizzy for months. She blamed her symptoms–vomitting, fatigue, and short, acute headaches–on stress. But soon, her illness became impossible to ignore. On July 27th, 2023, Nazira left her new team, her asylum status, and her college career in Italy to reunite with her family after nearly two years of separation. On August 21st, Nazima underwent an emergency operation to remove a brain tumor. Nazira stayed in the hospital for three months as her sister recovered, sleeping in a small chair in the room or a supplies closet.
As her relatives obtained asylum one by one, Nazira adapted as best she could to her second country of refuge. As she had in Italy, she started to learn the language and joined a team, FC Mittelbuchen. In August, the opportunity arose for her to play at the professional level, for FIFA’s newly inaugurated refugee team. Selection camps would be held in Australia and England. By duldung rules, Nazira was supposed to stay in Germany. But for Nazira, the risks of leaving Germany–a country that seemed to want her gone–were worth it.
Next steps:
- Context section about the shifting relationship between German government and Taliban
- Scene: Nazira’s selection as goalie
- What’s next? Italian asylum expires in a year
- Conclusion: race in Mallorca
