Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press
DOHA, Qatar - Iraqi athletes are hardly bothered by old equipment or few places to train. There are more pressing worries - the fear of being killed or kidnapped.
In the face of such danger, Iraq ended a two-decade absence from the Asian Games. It sent 81 athletes to Doha, men and women exhibiting a will to carry on amid the chaos.
Ali Adnan Amir is at enough of a disadvantage, even without the constant peril. He is competing in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke. He is also all of 10 years old, the youngest swimmer in the competition at Doha.
Amir practices every 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's considered lucky.
Amir's home and nearby club are in Baghdad's Palestine Street, where the violence is not as great as in other parts of the city.
"We try to do proper training despite all the hardship in Baghdad," said Mohammed Sarmad, who is Amir's coach.
National air pistol shooting champion Dhiyya Hassan had to stop practicing 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 switch his training base from Baghdad to the south. He won a bronze medal in the 170-pound Monday, Iraq's first medal of any kind at the Asian Games since it won five silver and two bronze in 1986 at Seoul, South Korea.
Hassan did not do well. He ranked 31st among 54 shooters, but neither he nor his coach were surprised.
"Before the war, I used to train at the club five times a week," the 44-year-old shooter said. "Now I train at home where there is no real atmosphere."
Tens of thousands of people have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Explosions, shootings and shelling are daily occurrences.
"Any fair person who looks at Iraq knows that it is impossible for the athletes to train," team spokesman Imad Nasser said. "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 ceremony because of a three-day curfew in Baghdad. It was imposed by the government after hundreds of people were killed last Thursday in a series of bombing attacks.
Iraq's soccer team was turned away from the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, which started seven weeks after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait's Sheik Fahd Al Sabah, the 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.
Iraq's delegation in Qatar 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 has begun for some Iraqi athletes to train abroad. Such action is encouraged by the International Olympic Committee.
IOC president Jacques Rogge supports the return of Iraq's athletes to competition. The Iraqi soccer team rejoined 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 in Doha to again appeal for the release of Iraqi Olympic officials who were kidnapped in July. Iraq Olympic Committee chairman Ahmed al-Hijiya and 30 other people were taken hostage at gunpoint during a daylight raid on a sports conference in Baghdad.
The fates of other coaches and officials is not encouraging, given the spiraling sectarian violence. In the latest episode, the bullet-riddled body of the chairman of one of country's leading soccer clubs was discovered over the weekend. He had been kidnapped by 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 $200,000 ransom.
Days earlier, gunmen killed a former national volleyball player, Naseer Shamil, in his shop in Baghdad. Ghanim Ghudayer, a popular soccer player 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 about the same time in a Shiite district of Baghdad.
Harem Ali would like his medal in the weightlifting to bring "smiles to the faces of Iraqis."
Sisters Liza and Lida Agasi hope their mere participation in beach volleyball speaks volumes to Iraq and the rest of the world.
"We came here to say that Iraq exists," they said