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PARIS: Zakia Kudadi has spent most of her life breaking the glass ceiling, or, in other words, breaking it with her helpers.
A Paralympic taekwondo athlete made history in Tokyo 2021 as the first Afghan woman to compete internationally since the Taliban reclaimed control of her country as US and NATO forces withdrew after a two-decade war.
She was initially banned from competing due to the rise of the Taliban, but was later evacuated from Afghanistan and allowed to compete for her country at the request of the international community.
At the 2024 Paralympics, part of the wider Olympics in Paris, Kudadi said she was competing on behalf of women in her country who have had their rights gradually stripped away over the past three years.
“It’s hard for me because I want to compete under my flag,” she said. But “the lives of all the girls and women in Afghanistan are forbidden. It’s over. Today, I’m here to win a medal in Paris for them. I want to show strength to all the girls and women in Afghanistan.”
Khudadadi is competing for a Paralympic refugee team, while other athletes are seeking medals under the Afghan flag, such as Olympic sprinter Kimia Yousofi. Yousofi's parents fled the country during the Taliban's rule, and she was born and raised in neighboring Iran. She says she wants to represent her country, regardless of its flaws, and to “be a voice for Afghan girls”.
For Khudadadi, she began training in taekwondo at the age of 11, secretly at a gym in her hometown of Herat, where there were no other opportunities for women to play the sport safely. Despite the closed culture around her, Khudadadi says her family was open and pushed her to stay active.
She said that in addition to her disability, she also had to struggle to compete in Afghanistan.
Despite having “one of the highest per capita disability populations in the world” due to the conflict, people with disabilities are often neglected and excluded from Afghan society, Human Rights Watch reports. Women are disproportionately affected.
Khudadadi said she was born without an arm and had been living with it covered up, but when she started competing, she felt her arm start to change.
“Before I started playing sports, I protected myself with my arms a lot. But little by little, I started showing my arms, but only in the club, only during competitions,” she said.
As she began competing, she said she felt the stigma begin to melt away. Taekwondo became her path to freedom once again, and she gained attention in 2016 when she won her first international medal.
Everything changed five years later, when the Taliban rose to power in a stunning fashion after the Biden administration withdrew from Afghanistan. While preparing to travel to Tokyo, Khudadi was trapped in the country's capital, Kabul.
The International Paralympic Committee issued its first statement saying that the Afghan national team would not participate in the 2021 Games “due to the ongoing deteriorating situation in the country”, but ahead of the Games, Khudadi released a video appealing for help from the international community.
“I ask all of you, women around the world, institutions that protect women, and all governments, not to allow the rights of Afghan women to participate in the Paralympic Movement to be taken away so easily,” she said. “I don’t want my fight to go to waste.”
She was evacuated to Tokyo in 2021 to compete, leaving her family behind.
The move made her the first Afghan female Paralympian in nearly two decades. In 2023, she won gold at the European Paralympic Championships.
After flying from Afghanistan, she settled in Paris, but she says she yearns for the mix of cultures in her country and the openness of the people walking through Kabul's bustling streets.
“I hope one day I can go back to Afghanistan, Kabul, to live together in freedom and peace,” she said.
Thousands of miles away in Khudadadi's hometown of Herat, Shah Mohammad, 38, showed his support for Khudadadi and other Afghan female athletes in Paris.
“We are happy for Afghan women who are going to the Olympics, but my wish is that someday women from inside Afghanistan will be able to participate and be a voice for women from this country,” Mohammad said.
That day is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The Taliban have cut women off from most public life and banned girls from studying beyond the sixth grade as part of a stricter package they have imposed since 2021, despite initially promising looser rules. In January, the United Nations said the Taliban were now restricting Afghan women's access to work, travel and health care if they are not married or have no male guardian.
They not only ban women and girls from playing sports, but also intimidate and harass those who have played sports.
But before the Taliban returned to power, women's sports were opposed by many in the country's ultra-conservative society, who saw them as a violation of women's modesty and their role in society.
However, the previous government, backed by Western nations, also had programs to promote women's sports, school clubs, leagues and national teams.
For Khudadadi, the IOC refugee team helped her and other athletes who had fled their countries continue their careers. The Paralympian had been training long hours, with her sights set on a gold medal in Paris, but was left frustrated as her efforts on behalf of women in her country waned and Afghanistan slipped out of the world's spotlight once again.
One question still lingers in Khudadadi’s mind: “Why has the world forgotten Afghan women?”
However, for others, like 43-year-old Mohammad Amin Sharifi, watching Khudadi and other Afghan Olympians in Paris, especially women, was a source of pride for people like him in Afghanistan.
“Now we need Afghan women to make their voices heard in every possible way, and the Olympics is the best place for that,” Sharifi said from Kabul. “We are happy and proud that these women are representing Afghans.”