Between Iraq and a Hard Place: The Iraq National Football Team

In the first of a series on football in conflict zones, Mike Kobylko examines the plight of the Iraqi National team and the hope they now provide. You can find more of Mike’s work by following him on twitter @Mike7077

It is eight years since US President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq. But virtually from that day, the country has existed in a state of near-civil war, bitterly divided along ethnic and sectarian lines. Under the Baathist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein (which ran 16th July 1979 – 9th April 2003), the minority Sunni Muslim community dominated over the majority Shia population. With the fall of the Baath regime, the country descended into chaos and violence. An insurgency, both domestic and involving foreign fighters, sought to destroy the US-led presence and the new Iraqi institutions, whilst the Sunni and Shia took up arms against one another.

Whilst Iraq’s flawed form of democracy appears to have taken root and, as of late 2011, the level of violence has dropped to a degree, Iraq remains a dangerous and tragic place – one now heavily under the influence of its mighty Shia neighbour, Iran. Amidst all this tragedy, however, there is one beacon of hope – one institution that has experienced its own disruption and suffering, and yet offers Iraq’s battered masses a shaft of light; the Iraqi national football team…

Under Saddam Hussein, the national football team of Iraq represented not an idealistic bastion of a brighter future, but rather a sporting metaphor for a brutalised and downtrodden people. As with all institutions of state, the Iraq Football Association and the Iraqi Olympic Committee, and by extension the Lions of Mesopotamia, as they are known, were tightly and strictly controlled by the regime. Uday Hussein, eldest son of Saddam, oversaw football matters. The sons of Iraq’s former despot were known for their particular brand of brutality, so you might think that the price for failure on the football pitch under Uday’s watch would be especially grisly.

You’d be right. For Iraq’s footballers, the stakes could barely have been higher. It doesn’t take anything more complex than a Google search to reveal that missing a penalty could result in having your feet whipped with thorns. Caning the soles of the feet was a common practice, and not just with the national team. Domestic footballers suffered, too. Defeats could also merit a bath in raw sewage. And don’t think for a second that opting not to represent the team was a realistic option. In a totalitarian state, there is rarely anywhere to hide. Missing training was enough to incur a prison sentence, where players were sometimes forced to kick a concrete football about.

Regardless of the difficulties involved with refusing to play, one cannot help but marvel at the incredible bravery of Iraq’s footballers during the 1980s. One cannot help but respect their pride in pulling on the national shirt. It makes the various complaints of England players about the stern atmosphere that Fabio Capello engendered at the team’s Rustenberg base in South Africa at last year’s World Cup seem trite, to say the least. Amidst the horror and the degradation of this period, when a footballer could step onto the pitch and, in all likelihood, not know if his performance would cost him his life, Iraq did manage to qualify for the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, despite the awful Iran-Iraq war robbing them of the chance to play their home games during the qualification process on Iraqi soil.

They were drawn in the same group as the hosts, as well as Paraguay and Belgium. To their credit, the Iraqis were not disgraced. After a 1-0 defeat to Paraguay, the Lions scored their first ever goal at a World Cup Finals in a 2-1 defeat to the Belgians – Ahmed Radhi writing his name forever into Iraq’s football history with the strike. There then followed another 1-0 defeat, at the hands of Mexico. The squad could return home with their heads held high. Not that Uday Hussein saw it this way. Basil Goreis, who played for Iraq at the 1986 World Cup, revealed to FourFourTwo in May 2010 that the squad’s brave efforts were rewarded with beatings. More humiliation for a group of players that had achieved a very respectable World Cup Finals debut.

The 1990s was a barren decade for the team. After the Gulf War of 1990-91, when Iraq invaded and occupied neighbouring Kuwait before being expelled by a US-led coalition, the country was banned from the Asian Games. Qualification for further World Cups was elusive, although they did reach the Quarter-Finals of the Asian Cup on two occasions. During this period, the country was at least able to host matches in Baghdad, except where the opposition refused. A FIFA ban was also imposed temporarily, although the official line was that this was due to Iraqi corruption.

And so we come to 2003, and the US-led invasion of Iraq and the downfall of Saddam Hussein’s terrible regime. Given the monumental ramifications that this action incurred on the people of Iraq, and the precipice on which the country gradually slipped towards following liberation, the football team was surprisingly stable. Perhaps, with the fear of Uday’s brutal reprisals now in the past, the players felt better able to focus on football without the wider context of whippings and public humiliation. We can only speculate. But in 2004, during the chaotic and violent immediate aftermath of Saddam’s overthrow, Iraq reached another Asian Cup Quarter-Final and finished a remarkable fourth at the Athens Olympic Games. Again, the nomadic squad had been playing their “home” fixtures in various other, more stable Middle Eastern locations.

By 2007, Iraq appeared to be tearing itself apart. Sunni fought Shia. Shia fought Sunni. Everybody seemed at war with the foreign troops in the country. At one time, Iraq’s living standards were comparable to the likes of Portugal and Greece. By now, a decade of economic sanctions followed by four years of near civil war had left vast swathes of the population living in poverty. But an increasingly football mad country was about to get a filip, something that Sunni, Shia and Iraqi Kurd alike could cling to at a time when symbols of unity were few and far between. Iraq went to Southeast Asia for the Asian Cup… and brought the trophy home. Iraqis rejoiced. There had emerged a kernel of positivity in a land where suffering and brutality were endemic.

There was further good news on the football front to come. In September 2008, the Iraq national football team trained in Baghdad for the first time since before the 2003 US-led invasion. There was a party atmosphere akin to a cup final as football crazed Baghdadis celebrated their heroes’ return. A mortar attack outside the stadium during half-time of the practice match that was taking place served as a reminder of life outside the al-Shaab Stadium, but failed to dampen spirits inside. July 2009 saw the return of home fixtures to the capital. A friendly against Palestine (another nation with a story or two to tell) finished 4-0 to the Iraqis. Three days earlier, the two teams had met in Arbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq, the team’s first game back on home soil.

It won’t all be plain sailing. Iraq remains dangerous and unstable. The Iraq Football Association was, in 2008, temporarily suspended from FIFA competitions after the now Shia-dominated Iraqi government disbanded the still Sunni-controlled Iraq Football Association. Happily, this was reversed after the government backed down. Then, a year later, the Iraqi Olympic Committee, in the hands of the government, disbanded the country’s football association, resulting in a new FIFA ban. As in 2008, the IFA was later restored to full capacity, and the country was reinstated by FIFA.

But conditions in the country at large remain deeply troubling. It is a divided nation, a land of mistrust and suspicion. Bombings are a daily occurrance. But the national football team, and especially their 2007 Asian Cup success, offer a respite. They offer a chink of light, a sliver of hope. Football won’t stitch Iraqi society together. It won’t entrench a free and stable democracy. It won’t put food on the table. But when 50,000 people turn up to watch a national league championship decider, as happened in 2008, or when thousands turn out for a training session, risking life and limb along the way, you have to admit, football is a force to be reckoned with. So give Iraq’s footballers a cheer. Because, let’s face it, they’ve earned it.