LONDON — Zakia Khudadadi would have been the first woman to represent Afghanistan at a Paralympic Games when they start in Tokyo this month, but her dream has been shattered amid the country’s turmoil.

The Afghanistan Paralympic Committee’s London-based Chef de Mission Arian Sadiqi told Reuters on Monday that the country’s two athletes would not be able to attend the Games that will commence on Aug. 24.

“Unfortunately, due to the current upheaval going on in Afghanistan, the team could not leave Kabul in time,” he said.

US forces have taken over air traffic control at Kabul airport, where five died on Monday in chaotic scenes with reports of firing in the air and a stampede.

Taliban insurgents have overrun major cities and now control most of Afghanistan. The hardline Islamist movement was ousted in 2001, but has made sweeping military gains in recent months as foreign forces, led by the United States, withdrew.

Sadiqi said he had been due to fly to Japan on Monday while the team — Khudadadi and track athlete Hossain Rasouli — had been scheduled to arrive in Tokyo on Aug. 17. Taekwondo athlete Khudadadi was profiled on the Paralympic website www.paralympic.org last week talking about her hopes for the Games.

“I was thrilled after I received the news that I have got a wild card to compete at the Games,” said the 23-year-old from Herat.

“This is the first time that a female athlete will be representing Afghanistan at the Games and I’m so happy,” she had said then.

Sadiqi said the athletes had been trying to secure flights, but prices soared as the Taliban took over a string of cities.

Then it became impossible.

“They were really excited prior to the situation. They were training wherever they could, in the parks and back gardens,” he said.

Afghan athletes first competed at the 1996 Paralympic Games but have never won a medal.

Rohullah Nikpai became Afghanistan’s first Olympic medalist in any sport when he won bronze in taekwondo at the 2008 Beijing Games, repeating the feat at London 2012.

Sadiqi said the future for Afghan athletes looked bleak, if the past was anything to go by.

“There was a lot of progress, both in the Olympics and the Paralympics,” he said of recent decades. “At the national level, there was a lot of participants, a lot of athletes… but we can only predict from what happened in the past.”

“Previously during the Taliban era, people couldn’t compete, couldn’t participate, especially female athletes.

“For me, it’s heartbreaking,” he said. “This would have been the first female Afghan taekwondo player to take part. This was history in the making. She was excited to take part. She was very passionate to compete.”

“Zakia would have been a great role model for the rest of the females in the country.” — Reuters

NAOMI Osaka briefly left a press conference in Cincinnati on Monday after she appeared to get upset with a line of questioning about her relationship with the media, leading her agent to describe a reporter as a “bully.”

Osaka withdrew from the French Open earlier this year after being punished for refusing to do media conferences, saying her mental health was adversely impacted by certain lines of questioning.

On Monday, a reporter from a Cincinnati newspaper asked the 23-year-old: “You’re not crazy about dealing with us, especially in this format. Yet you have a lot of outside interests that are served by having a media platform. How do you balance the two?”

Osaka twice asked the reporter to clarify his question and turned down an offer from the moderator to “move on to the next question” before giving a full reply.

“Ever since I was younger, I have had a lot of media interest on me, and I think it’s because of my background as well,” said Osaka, who is of Japanese-Haitian heritage but grew up mainly in the United States.

“I can’t really help that there are some things that I tweet or some things that I say that kind of create a lot of news articles or things like that… but I would also say I’m not really sure how to balance the two. Like, I’m figuring it out at the same time as you are, I would say.”

When another reporter began to ask about her preparations for the summer hard-court season and her pledge to donate her prize money from this week’s Western & Southern Open to Haitian earthquake relief efforts, Osaka appeared to wipe away tears.

The moderator called for a pause to the proceedings and Osaka left the room for a few minutes but returned to complete the news conference.

Osaka’s French Open withdrawal not only led to her revealing that she has struggled to cope with depression for a number of years, but it also prompted her to pull out from Roland Garros and Wimbledon for the sake of her mental well-being.

After losing early at the Tokyo Games, where she was given the honor of lighting the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony, she said she struggled to cope with the huge pressure and expectation placed on her.

Osaka’s agent, Stuart Duguid, condemned the reporter’s line of questioning on Monday in a statement provided to Reuters.

“The bully at the Cincinnati Enquirer is the epitome of why player/media relations are so fraught right now,” said Duguid. “Everyone on that Zoom will agree that his tone was all wrong and his sole purpose was to intimidate. Really appalling behavior.

“And this insinuation that Naomi owes her off-court success to the media is a myth — don’t be so self-indulgent.”

The reporter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Osaka has used her platform to call attention to mental health issues and she said at the news conference she felt supported by her fellow athletes.

“The biggest eye-opener was going to the Olympics and having other athletes come up to me and say they were really glad that I did what I did,” she added.

“I’m proud of what I did and I think that it was something that needed to be done.” — Reuters