The Lions of Mesopotamia
This is almost too sad for words.
Less than a year ago, the Iraqi National Football Team, the Lions of Mesopotamia, were the feelgood story of the sports world, winning the Asian Cup against almost overwhelming odds, at a time when the situation in Iraq was at perhaps its worst since the the US occupation began. The makeup of the team, which included Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, reflected the best hopes for Iraq, and the victory perhaps signaled that those hopes were realizable.
Alas.
Less than a year ago, the Iraqi National Football Team, the Lions of Mesopotamia, were the feelgood story of the sports world, winning the Asian Cup against almost overwhelming odds, at a time when the situation in Iraq was at perhaps its worst since the the US occupation began. The makeup of the team, which included Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, reflected the best hopes for Iraq, and the victory perhaps signaled that those hopes were realizable.
Alas.
The reality of modern Iraqi politics is such that each government ministry has been dolled out along political – read sectarian – lines. The driving force behind the dissolution of Iraq's sports associations was Jassim Jaafar, minister of youth and sports, a Shia politician who is a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), which is part of a Shia political umbrella group along with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. "You know what's going on? There is a conflict between Shia and Sunni in sport," explained Hani Abdel Saleem, sports editor for leading Arabic daily newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. "The minister of sport Jassim Jaafar has tried to push Hussein Saeed out. This guy wants him out because he played under Saddam Hussein and is a Sunni. He has said there is no way he will accept him. Jaafar has good contacts with Maliki too. But Jaafar got a letter from [Jalal] Talabani [Iraq's Kurdish President]. The people in Iraq know that Talabani told Jaafar to stop his involvement in trying to remove Hussein Saeed."
The intervention forced Fifa to temporarily reverse its decision and allowed the game to go ahead. Crisis averted? Not exactly. For one, this communiqué sent from the Iraqi government to Fifa doesn't deal with the dissolution of the Iraqi Olympic Committee. It is now a distinct possibility that the country will not be represented in Beijing. More worrying are the political consequences of the controversy, which will be felt long after the final whistle has blown. It raises the spectre that that the position of the unpopular Prime Minister Maliki has become untenable, especially if Iraq lose on Sunday. "Under Saddam Hussein's time the Sunnis controlled sport. Ammar al Hakim [de facto leader of the SIIC] wants to control this now," Ashraq Al-Awsat's political editor Fayad Maad told me. "But Hussein Saeed is more famous than Maliki. This is [politically] a big mistake. People are tired of politics and war. But the people are never tired of football. Yes sure, Maliki is Shia and he is doing what his party ordered him. He is with Hakim, and Hakim wants to control sport. They are idiots. If they were going to do this why not before qualification started or after. Not now."
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
4 Comments:
And here I was worrying that the team would not appear in the Olympics because they had been tortured to death and fed into industrial shredders for failing to please the government.
Oh, sorry, that would have been when Saddam and his two evil spawn were running the show.
It's a good thing people in the US would never use the Olympic team as a political bargaining chip.
By
Locomotive Breath, at 3:23 PM
You know, you are too fucking stupid to have a keyboard. The whole point of the post was to mourn a lost opportunity for a nation to come together, which appeared possible a year ago, behind a football team which represented all the disparate parts of the culture.
That is apparently not to be. I have no idea whose fault that is, although the article 's writer clearly blames the Maliki government.
By the way, here's what you missed by not clicking on the link:
"I am the President for three years and we have had many difficulties now. No players have suffered like Iraqi players have suffered," he told me when I met him at a football tournament in Abu Dhabi last year. "They [insurgents] have kidnapped my driver and my bodyguard. For what reason? What do they need? The cycling coach was killed too, the wrestling coach was killed, the captain of the volleyball team was killed. Many killings. But we don't stop because sportsmen are part of the people in Iraq. When the people suffer, we suffer with them." The real list is even longer. The whole of the taekwondo team was kidnapped on its way to Amman, their bodies found a year later in a shallow grave; Iraq's head tennis coach was murdered along with two players; the majority of the Olympic committee, plus 30 staff, were seized in one raid by kidnappers wearing army uniforms. Yet all the suffering has cut no ice with the government, which perhaps points to a far more nefarious reason for the move than one of punishing sporting failure: sectarianism.
Keep dreaming your dreams. You and John McCain can take a stroll to the Baghdad County Fair one day.
By
Barry, at 4:37 PM
I read the link before.
Since you can never note anything but bad news, is the worst from Iraq you can find? That's right Barry. Keep rooting against the Iraqi's progress. Here's what your leadership (Pelosi) thinks
Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.
El Sadr got his butt kicked and left for Iran. But dear old Pelosi thinks we're be beneficiary of Iranian "goodwill". You know the "death to America" crowd. She's had a little too much botox.
When your guy Obama cuts and runs you'll have want you want. Just like you did to Vietnam. And we'll know where to point the finger.
What will you say to the Iraqi's then? Sorry, we decided you didn't deserve the chance. Back to Saddam for you.
By
Locomotive Breath, at 4:28 PM
You're too craven to have a keyboard. Here's the proper use of one.
Washington Post
The Iraqi Upturn
Don't look now, but the U.S.-backed government and army may be winning the war.
Sunday, June 1, 2008; Page B06
THERE'S BEEN a relative lull in news coverage [LB: because the media don't want to report good news?] and debate about Iraq in recent weeks -- which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington's attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have "never been closer to defeat than they are now."
Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained "special groups" that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is -- of course -- too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments -- and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the "this-war-is-lost" caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).[LB's emphasis]
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We'll remember that you, Pelosi and the Guardian were on the wrong side of history. If it turns out that in 10 years we can safely travel to Iraq will you be able to look the Iraqi children in the face?
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The McCain article is over a year old. The taekwondo team was kidnapped back in 2006 between Fallujah and Ramadi. Since then there's been this little thing called the Anbar awakening. Those areas now are some of the most peaceful in Iraq. Cycling coach? 2006. I can't find links to the rest but I'll bet it's old news too. Yes, terrible events. But to quote that now as if it's current is to ignore the progress since then. (What media bias?)
But don't let two year old news divert you and the Guardian from your quest for failure in Iraq. Can't have that "American Imperialism" succeeding at doing anything good doncha know?
By
Locomotive Breath, at 9:23 AM
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