Football United: Iraq - The Beautiful Game Rising From The Ashes Of War

The latest in Goal.com's series of Football United, in-depth articles dedicated to how football brings people together and inspires hope all over the world, Hassanin Mubarak tells of how the game in Iraq is slowly returning to normal...

May 23, 2009 5:07:29 AM

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On August 24 of last year, over 60,000 fans packed out Al-Shaab Stadium in Baghdad to see provincial club Arbil claim their second consecutive Iraqi league title with a 1-0 victory over Al-Zawraa in extra-time.

Local fans berated Arbil’s travelling support chanting, "You know how to make yoghurt, but you don't know anything about football," referring to the dairy province that Arbil is famous for. Not even a mortar round at half-time that hit close to the stadium could disperse fans or dampen spirits.

The government claimed the match was a sign that normality was slowly returning to the Iraqi capital after the US-led invasion and the ensuing violence and bloodshed in its aftermath that ravaged the war-torn country.

On the football front things are looking up. The Iraq FA is soon expected to form a single league format for the first time since the 2003 war, the Ministry of Youth & Sports is talking about building new stadiums all over the country while the southern city of Basra has been successful in its bid to host the 21st edition of the Gulf Cup in 2013.

Work has already begun on a sports city and a state of the art sports arena for the tournament and with newly re-elected AFC president Mohammed Bin Hammam declaring he would allow Baghdad to host international matches, the Al-Shaab Stadium could soon play host international teams once again.

The signs are promising but no one is getting carried away. Progress has been slow and, as in the old days under the former regime, talk is cheap.

On the eve of Iraq’s qualification for their first World Cup in 1986, Saddam Hussein made the same promise of building new stadiums and introducing foreign coaches for Iraq’s clubs to develop the local league. Football fans are still waiting.

After the fall of Saddam’s government, the country was turned upside down and as many of Iraq’s government buildings were looted, the officials of some of Iraq’s top clubs were facing the reality of living (or staying alive) in the new post-Saddam era as they dusted off whatever silverware looters had left behind at their club’s headquarters on that chaotic day on April 9, 2003.

With a lack of funds and the increasing instability in Baghdad, the crop of the top club’s best players had little option but to look for contracts abroad or in the relatively stable Kurdish-ruled north, to put food on the table for their families - and most importantly to stay alive.

The once dominant Baghdad clubs of Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya, Al-Zawraa, Talaba and Al-Shurta were left with squads of teenagers elevated from their beleaguered youth systems and a few veterans who had either failed to find clubs abroad or were considered to be past it.

The top jamhur (well-supported) clubs that had featured household names from the national team included relative unknowns that even the Iraqi national coach or devout supporters would have failed to recognise.

The league also suffered and by 2004 the Iraqi championship, played out in three regional leagues because of the daily violence, had come to a halt.

There were even stories of teams being held up at gunpoint by armed bandits as they travelled to play matches. Stadiums were empty and the progress of the local talent in the country was stunted, with coaches of the Iraqi national and youth teams unable to scout for new players, as they were unable to travel around the country to watch matches.

The future for football in the Land Between Two Rivers looked bleak.

The capture of Saddam Hussein, and his resulting trial and execution in late 2006 failed to halt the unrest that centred firmly on the capital. The bombing of the shrines of Ali Al-Hadi and Hassan Al-Askari in Samarra in early 2006 brought sectarian tensions and an upsurge of violence.

Baghdad had become hell on earth with daily kidnappings, murders and car bombs, while in many areas of the city, it was militias that patrolled the streets, and not the Iraqi security forces.

At first, sportsmen were not a target; however this changed when fifteen members of the Iraqi taekwondo team were taken hostage in May 2006 between Falluja and Ramadi as they returned from Amman.

They had just finished taking part in the Jordan River International Championship Tournament and were invited to take part in the Las Vegas Open Taekwondo Championship to be held in August that year. The team waited ten days after the tournament in Amman in an attempt to obtain visas for the Las Vegas Open, and returned to Baghdad two days later. Their decomposed bodies were found in June 2007.

Nine days after the taekwondo team were kidnapped, the coach of the Iraqi tennis team and two players were shot dead by armed gunmen in the Saidiya district in Baghdad supposedly for wearing shorts!

Death became part of daily life for the average Iraqi. For fans, the names of young footballers such as Ghanim Khudhair, Manar Mudhafar and Ehab Karim who tragically lost their lives during the worst of those years will not be easily forgotten. No one was spared not even the legendary former national player and coach Ammo Baba. He was tied-up, blindfolded and beaten up by armed men, as they robbed his home in Zayouna in central Baghdad.

2007 was a catastrophic year for Iraq, the worst since the US invasion, however 2008 would see a reduction of attacks by the so-called insurgents, as the situation in the country began to stabilise. It had been the plan of the US administration to increase the number of US troops deployed in Iraq to provide security in the capital and the insurgent stronghold province of Al-Anbar.

The then US president George W.Bush ordered the deployment of five additional US brigades mainly to Baghdad and extended the tour of 4,000 Marines already in the country, the influx of more than 20,000 US troops became known as the surge and resulted in a 60% reduction in attacks in the country.

Life is slowly getting back to some form of normality, to the extent that ordinary people can at least walk the streets in the evening without the threat of kidnap or death, something that was inconceivable two years ago.

The country is still by no means hundred percent safe as a string of suicide bombings this year have proved but football is leading the way back to some sense of normalcy.

The league is up and running and for the first time after the war, fans finally get the feeling that a single league is only around the corner as spectators return to the stadiums in numbers.

From 2003, the Iraq FA has been forced to use a regional group system, that featured three or four groups but this season with the improving security situation, the FA formed two leagues of 14 teams and sources close to the FA expect a single league to be re-introduced in the next two seasons.

Despite the return of the league on the horizon, the face of Iraqi football has changed. The Baghdad clubs are no longer as dominant as before the war, and do not dominate the league as they once did.

The new powerhouses in the local game are Arbil, and its successes in the league have mirrored the improving economic prosperity in the Kurdistan region as they won two consecutive league championships in 2007 and 2008.

The club’s accomplishments come on the back of the millions of Iraqi dinars pumped into the club from the ruling Barzani clan through the Kurdistan Regional Government which gave the club the capability to go out and sign any player in the country they wanted. Arbil’s current squad features an entire bunch of players from Baghdad.

The capital may not be as powerful as before but should not be discounted however as clubs there are now starting to compete with the clubs from the north. This season has seen big names such as Noor Sabri, Ahmed Manajid, Haidar Abdul-Razzaq and Basim Abbas return to Baghdad and sign for Talaba, a club now financed by the Ministry of Higher Education.

The issue over club funding had been a big talking point after the war and in 2008, the Iraqi government proposed that clubs were to be linked to national institutions or ministries to help their finances, with several clubs having threatened to withdraw from the league because of the lack of money.

The same system had been used during the times of the old Baghdad league known as the league of institutes that was formed in 1962 before it was eventually phased out by the Baathist government and clubs became dependent on the FA for funds.

One of the big success stories from the new system has been this season’s high flyers Amana, a team now bankrolled by the city of Baghdad. The club were once considered one of the best teams in Iraq in the late fifties and early sixties until its trade union and communists roots and the rise of the Baathists saw its leadership purged and several of its players imprisoned. As a result the team quickly dropped down the divisions.

A merger in 1977 with top flight club Al-Baladiyat saw the name of Amana return to the top flight but in the mid-nineties the club were relegated and were languishing in the lower division until last season, when, with a group of newly signed players were promoted back to the top division.

Amana are the only club that are still unbeaten so far this season and still have a realistic chance of qualifying for the final stage of the Iraqi championship.

One thing is for sure is that football in Iraq is slowly and surely back on track, and next season the Iraqi league, the grassroots of the game, will be even more competitive. There is a long way to go but so much has already been done.

Hassanin Mubarak

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