Athletes from Iraq face unique challenges, like staying alive

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This article was published 05/12/2006 (7125 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DOHA, Qatar (AP) – A lack of training venues or basic equipment is trivial on the scale of difficulties facing athletes in Iraq: The fear of being kidnapped for ransom or killed is far more foreboding.

In spite of that, Iraq has ended a two-decade absence from the Asian Games and sent 81 athletes to Doha, men and women exhibiting a bold determination to carry on amid the chaos, as well as the rare personal drive that fuels sporting ambition everywhere.

Ali Adnan Amir is at enough of a disadvantage here without the constant fear for survival.

A shy boy, at age 10 Amir is competing in the 100-and 200-metre backstroke and is the youngest swimmer in the competition at Doha.

Amir said he practises each day for about three hours after school, “but whenever there is a curfew I can’t go to train so I wait for the next day” – or the day after that.

And he is lucky. Amir’s home and nearby club are in Baghdad’s Palestine Street, where violence has been on a lesser scale than other parts of the city.

“We try to do proper training despite all the hardship in Baghdad,” said Mohammed Sarmad, Amir’s coach.

National air pistol shooting champion Dhiyya Hassan had to stop practising at his regular club and set up a range at his house.

Weightlifter Harem Ali, a Kurd from the northern city of Sulaimaniya, had to transplant his training base from Baghdad to the south. He was rewarded with a bronze medal in the 77-kilogram division on Monday, Iraq’s first medal of any kind at the Asian Games since it won five silver and two bronze in’86 at Seoul, South Korea.

Hassan did not do well here, ranked 31st in a field of 54 shooters, but neither he nor his coach were surprised.

“Before the war, I used to train at the club five times a week. Now I train at home where there is no real atmosphere,” said Hassan, 44.

The atmosphere is a problem throughout Iraq, where tens of thousands of people have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Explosions, shootings and shelling are a daily distraction.

“Any fair person who looks at Iraq knows that it is impossible for the athletes to train,” said team spokesman Imad Nasser. “There aren’t enough clubs and there can’t be reconstruction when there is war.”

The Iraqi delegation arrived in Doha only two days before the opening ceremonies because of a three-day curfew in Baghdad that was imposed by the government after hundreds of people were killed last Thursday in a series of bombing attacks.

But their arrival did start a new chapter.

Iraq’s soccer team was turned away from the’90 Asian Games in Beijing, which started seven weeks after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait’s Sheik Fahd Al Sabah, head of the Olympic Council of Asia, was killed in that invasion and Iraq was suspended by the continental authorities. With Saddam deposed, Iraq has been welcomed back in.

Iraq’s delegation here has hopes for medals in weightlifting, rowing and boxing.

“Every Iraqi who came to Doha is a hero even without winning,” said Tiras Anwaya, head of the delegation.

“Had the security situation been better, Iraqi athletes would have trained better and used better equipment. Now the athletes are here and their minds are in Baghdad thinking about explosions and killings.”

Khudayer Abbas Basha, coach for the national weightlifting team, said planning was underway for some Iraqi athletes to train abroad, a situation encouraged by the International Olympic Committee.

IOC president Jacques Rogge supports the return of Iraq’s athletes to competition. The Iraqi soccer team returned to international competition in the 2004 Asian Cup and made a surprising run to the semifinals at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Rogge used a meeting of the Olympic Council of Asia here to again issue an appeal for the release of Iraqi Olympic officials who were kidnapped in July.

Iraq Olympic Committee chairman Ahmed al-Hijiya and 30 other people who were taken hostage at gunpoint during a brazen daylight raid on a sports conference in Baghdad and still have not been released.

The fates of other coaches and officials is not encouraging for bolstering the ranks in the wake of spiraling sectarian violence.

In the latest setback, the bullet-riddled body of the chairman of one of country’s leading soccer clubs was discovered on the weekend. He had been kidnapped gunmen three days earlier.

An Iraqi international soccer referee also was abducted this fall as he left the soccer association’s offices. The kidnappers reportedly demanded a US$200,000 ransom.

Days earlier, gunmen killed a 37-year-old former national volleyball player, Naseer Shamil, in his shop in Baghdad. Ghanim Ghudayer, a popular 22-year-old footballer and member of the Iraqi Olympic team, was kidnapped in September and has not been heard from since.

Iraq’s national soccer coach, Akram Ahmed Salman, resigned in July after receiving death threats against him and his family. The national wrestling coach, a Sunni, was killed around the same time in a Shiite district of Baghdad.

Harem Ali said he hoped his medal in the weightlifting brought “smiles to the faces of Iraqis.”

Sisters Liza and Lida Agasi hope their mere participation in the beach volleyball competition speaks volumes to Iraq and the rest of the world.

“We came here to say that Iraq exists. We only participated to raise the name of Iraq high.”