Afghan player Najia Fayez (back row, second from the right) competed with her IWFFA team at the Kelly McGillis Classic championship in 2024.
IWFFA Tournament Returns to Provincetown with Afghan Women Set to Speak and Play
by Rebecca M. Alvin
Diane Beruldsen has been coming to Provincetown to play flag football since 1994. The organization she founded, the International Women’s Flag Football Association (IWFFA) was originally founded as the National Women’s Flag Football Association in 1995 with just U.S. and Canadian players, but officially became international in 1997, changing its name to reflect its mission to introduce women around the world to the sport. Their expansion began in Denmark and then in many other countries in the Nordic region. Reflecting back, Beruldsen says they were able to start up 24 teams in six months in the region.
But then they expanded further and introduced the sport to countries with more complicated systems around gender, including India and Afghanistan.
“In 2017, I got an email from [Najeebullah] Fayez,” Beruldsen says. “He worked with the Olympics in Afghanistan, and asked us if we would teach the Afghanistan women flag football. So I said yes. And in 2018, I went to India, (because I couldn’t go to Afghanistan), and they came to India. And that was the beginning of this. So who knew? Ten Afghan women came to India. They got training, they understood that their job was to bring the sport back to Afghanistan. And they did. They went into the schools… They started the Afghan Women’s Flag Football Federation. Only women were playing and coaching, which was our [rule]. I was dying for them to develop the sport, with no influence from the men.”
While in India, Beruldsen worked with Fayez and also the president of a local football organization in India. “I was sitting with these two men in front of me, and I told both of them, ‘Now that your women know how to play flag football, that IWFFA, we have to have a female ambassador, and the women have to rule their own sport.’ Both of the men said yes.” Not long after that, she says the Indian football organization severed ties with IWFFA, but Fayez understood and agreed that women had to rule their own sport and he and Beruldsen remained in close contact.
“That was profound. For a man from his culture,” Beruldsen says.
Things were going well for the women, but then, in 2021, when the U.S. pulled its troops out of Afghanistan, leaving the Afghan people to the mercy of the merciless Taliban, Beruldsen started getting calls from women who were being targeted for having played this the sport as the Taliban sought revenge.
“I was in Jamaica at the time, and got an email. It was August 2021. I started getting text messages, ‘Madam, madam, please help get us out of Afghanistan. We’re hiding, the Taliban is after us.’ And I had no idea what to do. I just did what they asked me. ‘Will you write to the congressman?’ I did, nothing happened. ‘Would you write to the Senator?’ I did, nothing happened. ‘Would you write to the State Department?’ I did and nothing happened. ‘Would you get us a lawyer?’ And I really thought then, this is hopeless; nothing’s gonna happen,” she says recalling the frustration.
In an essay Beruldsen wrote about the IWFFA’s involvement in Afghanistan, she writes, “[The Taliban] began looking and searching for women who participated in sports because they broke Taliban law and must be punished. Mahjabin Hakimi, a player on the Kabul Municipality Volleyball Club was beheaded in the capital city of Kabul by Taliban troops. All our flag football players had to go into hiding because if they were found, they too could be killed.”
Although she knew it was not her fault, Beruldsen writes there was a lot of guilt and concern that she’d inadvertently put these women at risk simply by teaching them to play a game. She knew she had to do everything possible to help them.“I emailed our members at that time—it was over 10,000 since 1997. And four hours later, Bridget Campbell, an immigration lawyer…. she says, ‘Diane, I’m an immigration lawyer. I’d be happy to go pro bono. I have an [immigration assistance] organization, Aldea.’ And so we began work right away.”
The organization was eventually able to get more than 73 flag football players and their families out of Afghanistan through a complicated web of immigration strategies that brought them first to Mexico and then most of them to Canada.
It’s an incredible example of women helping women, women, along with male allies, seeing our common humanity—something that seems in short supply in recent years. And this year the IWFFA will come to Provincetown with women from Afghanistan, including Fayez’s daughter Najia. From her home in California where she is now in college studying to become a lawyer, Najia acknowledges the sheer luck of being born into a family with a rare patriarch. Her father actually encouraged her to get involved in the sport, while so many other men in Afghanistan actively discourage the women in their lives from pursuing their dreams.
“My family—my brothers, my father, fortunately, they are always supporting me and my mom. For example, when we came to the U.S., my father just started telling my mom to go to English classes, you have to learn how to drive, and you can do so many things here. So yeah, my family, they are not like Afghan men that don’t want to let women do anything. Here, I can do whatever. I’m not wearing the scarf and I go to college, and my father’s not telling me anything, or my brothers. They’re educated and they’re smarter, they know what’s wrong,” she says, her young face shining with pride.
But she also acknowledges a deep sadness for what is happening to other women in her country. “I want to be a voice for them, and I want to let people know what’s happening in Afghanistan… I want them to know to not accept the Taliban government because life is very hard right now. Like, there are many things happening that they’re not showing on the news and the TV and they’re hiding it, especially in the villages,” she says.
Today she says she thinks of Beruldsen as part of her family. But Beruldsen is clear that it was the IWFFA that got Najia and the others to safety. “It’s not Diane who got them asylum. It’s the International Women’s Flag Football Association. That’s how we did it. And it’s so interesting, myself, I learned through this organization how powerful we are when women unite.”
As Fayez prepares to come to Provincetown for the first time, it seems relevant to ask her thoughts about the largely LGBTQ community here, as she is coming from a culture where sexuality and gender identity are seen in very traditional ways, with harsh penalties for any transgressions. Beruldsen, who is a lesbian, says with a smile, “Well, she came to Key West, so we kind of kind of primed them a little bit.”
Fayez admits, “At first, I don’t know about them because, like, if you are in Afghanistan, it’s hidden, because no one knows about them. And then one day, when I was in Mexico, I saw a boy who was wearing a girl’s dress and I started laughing. And I told my dad and he was like, ‘No!’ And then he explained everything to me, that there’s also this kind of people, that we have to respect them, and they are also a human. They have rights, we have to respect them.”
While she says it took some adjusting in her mind initially, when she came to California she had teachers and friends in the LGBTQ community and it helped her to see that her father was right. “I respect everyone. I see everyone with the same eye and the same light,” she says enthusiastically and smiles.
As Beruldsen waits for the Afghan players still in Canada to obtain their permanent residency so they can travel internationally, she is also working on raising money to help the Afghan women who remain in Afghanistan, as well as another group of women the IWFFA has introduced to flag football: women in Nicaragua, who she hopes will be able to compete in next year’s tournament.
But the IWFFA Tournament is not just a schedule of football matches.The event opens on Friday with the Over the Hill Kick Ball event for local senior women as well as younger women to play just for fun. Then Najia and her aunt Shakila will speak about their experiences as Afghan women before and after the Taliban took power. They will be joined by other players from South Sudan and Guatemala who will talk about their respective experiences in difficult circumstances within their home countries. And there are numerous other events throughout the weekend and the tournament itself begins on Saturday.
Everyone is invited to enjoy the games, to hear Najia and the other women share their experiences on Friday, and to celebrate with the players Saturday night at The Underground. But whether you come to these events or not, you can also get involved by donating to help the Afghan and Nicaraguan women through IWFFA’s GoFundMe campaigns.
The IWFFA Tournament kicks off on Friday, September 19 and continues its public programming through Sunday, September 21. For information about the organization, the tournament, and its events, visit iwffa.org. To support female flag footballers in Nicaragua visit gofund.me/ce06d19db or for Afghanistan visit gofund.me/456a392af.
