The International Olympic Committee has accepted three women who the Taliban deny are representing Afghanistan at the Olympics.

The Taliban regime on Tuesday guaranteed that it would not recognize any of the three Afghan women who will compete in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris as representatives of Afghanistan.

“Since women’s sports are suspended in Afghanistan, we have no responsibility. They don’t belong to us,” said government sports spokesman Atal Mashwani, who claims only three male athletes as the country’s legitimate ambassadors.

Since returning to power in 2021, the Taliban have taken a series of measures that have severely restricted women’s freedom, banning them not only from receiving an education, especially higher education, but also from engaging in any sporting activity.

“It is an honour to represent the girls of my country again. Girls and women have been deprived of their basic rights, including education, which is the most important,” responded sprinter Kamiya Yusufi, who wore the colours of Afghanistan at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, where he was the taekwondo flag bearer along with Farzad Mansouri.

Kamiya, who is a refugee in Australia, has been highly critical of the current reality in her country and through the Australian Olympic Committee said: “I represent the stolen dreams and aspirations of these women who do not have the power to make decisions as free people.”

The Taliban authorities have been intransigent about restricting women’s rights, but in March the International Olympic Committee (IOC) expressed its determination to have a “gender-balanced” Afghan delegation in Paris in 2024.

So, with the participation of members of the Afghan Olympic Committee, almost all of whom are in exile, it was approved that cyclist sisters Fariba and Yulduz Hashimi would join Kami Youssouf to complete the women’s trio in the French capital, in a selection in which three men would compete in athletics, judo and swimming.

At the same time, the IOC included two more Afghan women in the refugee team, namely judoka Nigara Shaheen and Manizha Talash, a breakdancing discipline making its Olympic debut and combining two elements that the Taliban disapproves of in women’s competitions: dance and music.

The IOC banned Afghanistan from the world’s biggest sporting event during the first phase of Taliban rule, between 1996 and 2001, which was then overthrown by foreign military intervention, but has now taken a different approach by including a gender-equal delegation for the nation among the 206 countries represented.