Kardashian West helps fly Afghan women soccer players to UK

LONDON – Members of Afghanistan’s women’s younker improvement shot squad arrived successful Britain aboriginal Thursday aft being flown from Pakistan with the assistance of a New York rabbi, a U.K. shot nine and Kim Kardashian West.

A level chartered by the world prima and carrying much than 30 teenage players and their families, astir 130 radical successful all, landed astatine Stansted Airport adjacent London. The Afghans volition walk 10 days successful coronavirus quarantine earlier starting caller lives successful Britain.

English Premier League nine Leeds United has offered to enactment the players.

Britain and different countries evacuated thousands of Afghans successful a rushed airlift arsenic Kabul fell to Taliban militants successful August. Many much radical person since near overland for neighboring countries successful hopes of traveling connected to the West.

Women playing sports was seen arsenic a governmental enactment of defiance against the Taliban, and hundreds of pistillate athletes person near Afghanistan since the radical returned to powerfulness and began curbing women’s acquisition and freedoms.

Ad

Khalida Popal, a erstwhile skipper of Afghanistan’s nationalist women’s squad who has spearheaded evacuation efforts for pistillate athletes, said she felt “so blessed and truthful relieved” that the girls and women were retired of danger.

“Many of those families near their houses erstwhile the Taliban took over. Their houses were burnt down," Popal told the Associated Press. "Some of their household members were killed oregon taken by Taliban. So the information and the accent was precise high, and that’s wherefore it was precise important to determination accelerated to get them extracurricular Afghanistan.”

Australia evacuated the members of Afghanistan's nationalist women’s shot team, and the younker girls' squad was resettled successful Portugal.

Members of the improvement team, galore of whom travel from mediocre families successful the country's provinces, managed to scope Pakistan and yet to unafraid U.K. visas. But they were near successful limbo for weeks with nary formation retired of the state arsenic the clip bounds connected their Pakistani visas ticked down.

Ad

The squad got assistance from the Tzedek Association, a nonprofit U.S. radical that antecedently helped the past known subordinate of Kabul’s Jewish assemblage permission Afghanistan.

The group’s founder, Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, has worked with world TV prima Kardashian West connected transgression justness betterment successful the U.S. He reached retired to her to assistance wage for a chartered level to the U.K.

“Maybe an hr later, aft the Zoom call, I got a substance connection that Kim wants to money the full flight,” Margaretten said.

Kardashian West’s spokeswoman confirmed that the prima and her marque SKIMs had chartered the flight.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.