Former Afghanistan women's football captain Khalida Popal speaks during a motivational session with young women in south London on March 30, 2018. Former Afghanistan women's football captain Khalida Popal fled her country after receiving death threats but it has far from cowed her in fighting the prejudice which confronts women daily, she told AFP. The 30-year-old -- who has been based in Denmark since 2011 -- takes her message round the world and spoke after giving an inspirational talk to the girls of Team England who will compete in the Street Child World Cup in Moscow later this year. Popal said women could achieve anything, a belief she formed when as a child a group of men refused to give back the football she was playing with, saying girls had no right to take part in sport. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS (Photo credit should read DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)
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Former Afghan football captain Khalida Popal speaks out on her country's fall to the Taliban
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Former Afghanistan women's football captain Khalida Popal speaks during a motivational session with young women in south London on March 30, 2018. Former Afghanistan women's football captain Khalida Popal fled her country after receiving death threats but it has far from cowed her in fighting the prejudice which confronts women daily, she told AFP. The 30-year-old -- who has been based in Denmark since 2011 -- takes her message round the world and spoke after giving an inspirational talk to the girls of Team England who will compete in the Street Child World Cup in Moscow later this year. Popal said women could achieve anything, a belief she formed when as a child a group of men refused to give back the football she was playing with, saying girls had no right to take part in sport. / AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS (Photo credit should read DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)
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CNN  — 

On August 15, Khalida Popal watched from Denmark as her country fell into the grip of the Taliban.

Following nearly two decades of conflict, the insurgent militant group reclaimed Afghanistan’s capital and took over the country’s presidential palace, barely a month after the US began the final withdrawal of military troops from its longest running war.