Afghan female taekwondo fighter fears Taliban return

KABUL, Sept 18 (AFP): In a gym underneath a wedding hall in Kabul, Laila Hossaini shouts as she slams her fist into a punchbag at her final training session before heading to the Asian Games in South Korea.
For Hossaini, 28, the tournament will be the biggest of her career in taekwondo-a sport she took up as a young girl when advised by doctors to exercise to overcome chronic bronchitis.
She grew up in Iran after her family fled Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, and they all returned after the austere Taliban government in Kabul was ousted in 2001.
Hossaini won a silver medal at the South Asian Games in 2010 and competed in other international events.
But Hossaini fears that progress made on women's rights in Afghanistan over the last 13 years could be under threat, and that the limited freedoms that allowed her to pursue her love of taekwondo could again disappear.
"Of course, we have our concerns-not only me, but all the girls-after 2014, if the Taliban make a comeback," she told the news agency.
"The Taliban will not let us to do anything, the achievements that we made will be reversed, so we are all worried."
The US-led combat mission in Afghanistan will end this year, and violence is worsening nationwide as foreign troops exit and Taliban insurgents launch fresh offensives against Afghan soldiers and police.
Despite the end of Taliban rule, women in ultra-conservative Muslim Afghanistan are often restricted to the house and are discouraged from playing sport-let alone practising martial arts like taekwondo.