Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Safer in the City? Back to Basics in Iraqi Football

Post-surge sporting events in Baghdad are about as secure as Super Bowl XVIII these days. How then is it possible that an hour south of the capital in Hillal a Buhairat striker one-on-one with the goalie in the final minute of play poised to tie the 0-1 match be fatally shot in the head by an opposing fan from the stands? And only a couple of days later, an off-duty police officer celebrating the win of his Sinjar club’s 2-1 victory by firing his gun into the air, lost control of his weapon fatally shooting the 18-year-old winning goalie, Mohammed Amin, according to the New York Times. What do these recent examples tell us about life in Iraq?

The passion of sport in Iraqi society offers a profound lens by which one may analyze what it’s like to be Iraqi. From the outside looking in, it may appear that the violence in Iraq is so pervasive that one becomes complacent. But what of the inside looking out? How would one detail the evolution of the Iraqi identity through dictatorial oppression, war, and whatever one would call the current status of existence?

Prior to the unnecessary US invasion of Iraq, playing football for the National Team wasn’t exactly the ultimate honor that one might expect. Under the direction of Uday Hussein, football players of the highest caliber were tortured for poor play. According to Eamonn Brennan of Bay Area NBC News, “He caned their feat, forced them to kick a concrete ball, and kept scorecards of how many times a player should be beaten depending on how poor the player's performance was.” The sport’s tremendous popularity would cause a prodigious athlete to strive for success, but being named to the National Team would undoubtedly be a bittersweet accomplishment with pending physical anguish never mind the mental stress to perform at the highest level.

It’s this sort of dual existence with competing motives that won’t allow the Iraqi citizen to lead a fulfilling life. This feeling of knowing yourself and striving to be better, yet being all too aware of what outside forces are lurking and might sink your progress which is quite debilitating. It’s analogous to W.E.B. Du Bois’ description of the double-consciousness experienced by the post-slavery American Negro in his essay ‘Of Our Spiritual Strivings’ in The Souls of Black Folk.

“Born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this…world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the evolution of the other world…One ever feels his two-ness…two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

As Iraqi security forces and civilian deaths have decreased to a consistent but more manageable lull, the threat on general safety has not disappeared, and 18 months from Obama’s promised US Troop deployment, a sovereign nation will find security no less tricky. The same football stadium in Baghdad in which US Troops discovered buried weapons today is relatively safe. But outside of the capital, there is a feeling of increased risk of peril at sporting events.

The parents of Mohammed Amin, the late high school senior, know the reality of this risk all too well. Enraged, they have demanded “so-called blood money” from the 28-year-old officer Jawad Kadham who is currently in custody, charged with recklessly discharging an official weapon and with negligent homicide. He will have his day in court and so will the spectator determined to govern the outcome of the amateur match in Hillal by firing his weapon on the field. How do these instances of violence shape the collective psyche when parents can not trust their children to compete in the nation’s most popular sport without fearing for the lives of their young?

Brooklyn-born psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps evaluate the fundamental roadblocks prohibiting Iraqi citizens from experiencing fulfillment.

Maslow contends that unfulfilled needs lower on the ladder keep an individual from ascending to the next level. In other words, someone dying of thirst quickly forgets their thirst when they have no oxygen. Therefore, if the ‘Security Need’ just above the need for food and water is not satisfied, how can Iraqi families build the next generation’s quality of life to the point of realizing self-actualization? How can community be formed toward a purpose of bettering the culture as a whole? The answer is it won’t. It can’t.

Not until the safety of its citizens is ensured and justice is served to those who strike with violence can the Iraqi culture grow up and set their sights on achieving new heights. On the field of play, each player should feel a single consciousness, a uniform purpose seeking success without trepidation, striving to raise the trophy without fear of upsetting the balance of life and death, but of losing the match.

Maybe today it’s not the reality of life in Iraq as the culture has not had the luxury of progressing beyond satisfying the basic needs of human life. As Iraq regains control of its own governance, one can only hope for the culture’s sake that fears of civil war subside and peace remains. For the next generation of Iraqis, a hope exists for one purpose for which to strive embodied in wins and losses rather than life and death on the football field.

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