Exiled cricketer says Iranian women players face emotional toll amid refuge in Australia

MELBOURNE, March 11 - The Iranian women soccer players offered asylum in Australia face emotional upheaval and a struggle to come to terms with their separation from loved ones at home, a cricketer who fled Afghanistan's Taliban regime told Reuters on Wednesday.

Australia granted humanitarian visas on Tuesday to five Iranian footballers after they sought asylum, fearing persecution if they returned home after they failed to sing the national anthem at a Women's Asian Cup match.

Another player and support staffer accepted the Australian offer of aid but one changed her mind and decided to return home amid the U.S.-Israeli air-war in Iran, the government said on Wednesday.

The saga reminded cricketer Tooba Khan Sawari of the dislocation she felt as a sporting refugee after fleeing Afghanistan when the Taliban swept to power in 2021.

Sawari was one of a number of women athletes offered asylum in Australia after fearing for their safety in Afghanistan.

For Sawari, the hardest part of resettling was not the practical challenge of learning a new language or navigating an unfamiliar reality, but the persistent ache of separation from home.

"Being a refugee, it has lots of pain," Sawari, now 25, told Reuters from Canberra, where she lives, studies and coaches cricket.

"Every day you will miss your parents, your family. You miss the time you spent with your compatriots. Even the food that you ate in your country – you miss each single thing.

"It’s not easy to manage everything by yourself without any family support," she added.

"It will mean lots of depression .... I found it very difficult."

For refugee athletes, staying connected to their sports can help them cope with the feelings of confusion and anxiety brought by their dislocation, said Catherine Ordway, a sports lawyer and academic who was instrumental in helping the Afghan cricketers settle in Australia.

"For the cricketers, that has been hugely important," said Ordway, a visiting scholar at the UNSW Business School in Canberra.

"That will be important for the Iranian players as well ... They'll be guided, I'm sure, by their legal advisers and community contacts that they've already made ... And then they can start exploring what football team options there are."

Sawari said she had undertaken counselling for years after arriving in Australia to help cope with the psychological strain of exile.

While praising Australia's government for supporting her and her former Afghanistan teammates in resettling, she warned the Iranian footballers that the adjustment would take time.

"It's not easy in a country when you don't know about their language or culture," she said.

"It is very hard to accept that you're living somewhere else." REUTERS