#2 The Iraqi football team and the winds they set about.
The stage was the 2007 AFC Asian Cup final and to bare eyesight, it looked like it was no big occasion. Only 60,000 people showed up at the Jakarta stadium that could house twice the amount of people for the final. However, the real story lied in the backdrop as Iraq, a country on its knees due to the US insurgency defied all odds to lift the Cup and rekindle the hopes and dreams of their countrymen.
The Iraqi football team brought back the gift of joy to a nation torn apart by internal conflicts, foreign invasion masquerading as freedom facilitators and the one and only Saddam Hussein. There was finally something the nation and its people could celebrate and it infused a sense of brotherhood which was a much-needed whiff of fresh air.
The events leading up to the Iraq-Saudi Arabia final were dramatic and intense. In fact, the game was nearly called off. Following Iraq’s semifinal victory over South Korea, a group of suicide bombers set themselves off and killed 50 people and injured more than a hundred unassuming individuals.
In the aftermath, Iraq were contemplating withdrawal. And that would have been it if not for the heart and determination of Iraq’s Younis Mahmoud, the captain of the side. He had seen a woman crying over the dead body of her 12-year-old child saying her son was the sacrifice for the Iraqi national team.
Younis decided that if at all Allah was throwing them a rope into the well, he was not going to turn a blind eye. The team was determined to win the cup for their motherland and their brothers and sisters. Younis led out a team of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, who had been killing each other under the manipulative regime of Hussein.
Fittingly, Younis Mahmoud went on to score the only goal of the final in the 75th minute and their team would become the brokers of a nationwide integration that saw all of its people coming out into the streets together to celebrate irrespective of their ethnicities and socio-political differences.
The victory made a definite impact and instances of ethnic violence reduced to half of what it was in the subsequent year. The football team was a spitting image of racial and ethnic harmony and a symbol of what could be achieved together in unity. After all, ‘differences were meant not to divide but enrich.’
