The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has invited six Afghan athletes to participate in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris — three women and three men.
This was reported by France 24, noting that before this the IOC held consultations with the National Olympic Committee of Afghanistan, which is in exile.
Participation of athletes from Afghanistan at the 2024 Olympics
All three invited Afghan athletes live outside Afghanistan, which is controlled by the radical Islamist Taliban movement. The women will compete in track and field and cycling.
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In particular, the invitation was received by track and field athlete Kamiya Yusufi, who carried the flag for the Afghan national team at the Tokyo Olympics and emigrated to Iran after the Taliban seized power.
The Taliban significantly restrict the rights of girls and women to education, employment, and public space. In an interview with AFP, Taliban sports official Atal Mashwani said that “girls' sports have been stopped in Afghanistan now”.
— Afghanistan has only three athletes. When girls don't play sports, how can they get into the national team? — he said.
The IOC said it had not consulted Taliban officials about the team and they had not been invited to the Games. An IOC spokesman had previously said that the Afghan NOC, including its president and secretary general, who live in exile, remain the “only interlocutors” on the preparation and participation of the Afghan team.
But the Afghan committee's director general, Dad Mohammad Payenda Akhtari, who remained in the country, said that despite the fact that male athletes were preparing abroad, his committee coordinated with Taliban authorities on the preparation of male athletes. Mashwani claims that the government supports them with scholarships.
It is also known that Afghan athletes will compete under the black, red and green flag of the old Western-backed government.
Since coming to power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed numerous restrictions on women, which the UN has called gender apartheid.
