Wednesday, July 30, 2008
It’s a bit of déjà vu for Iraqi athletes and sports fans. On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee said it will let Iraq participate in the games in Beijing after Iraqi government officials vowed that its Olympics committee would be independent and free from political influence.
The lifting of the ban on Iraq’s participation in the Olympics came with just enough time to let Iraq meet today’s deadline to submit the names of athletes competing in the track and field events. That means Iraq will be sending two competitors to Beijing. Other potential participants in the fields of judo, rowing, weightlifting and archery will have to sit this one out, because the deadline for name submissions for those events passed last week.
The IOC banned Iraq from the games after the Iraqi government dissolved the country’s national Olympic committee in May. The government said the committee hadn’t had a quorum for several years, ever since several members of the group were kidnapped, and alleged that the committee was mired in corruption.
A similar kind of back and forth occurred in the soccer world, also because of the Iraqi Olympics committee’s dissolution. That prompted FIFA, the world’s soccer governing body, to bar the Iraqi team from international matches for one year, including the World Cup. But Iraq said the dissolution didn’t apply to the Iraqi Football Association, and FIFA ended up letting the Iraqi team play.
In June, Iraq went on to win two of its World Cup qualifying matches against Australia and China, but ended up losing to Australia and Qatar in other games, which kept them out of the next phase of the qualifying matches.
As for the Olympics, the IOC agreed to allow Iraq to participate after Iraq said it would hold free elections by the end of November to choose members of a new Iraqi Olympics committee. The polling would be observed by international monitors. In the meantime, there will be an interim committee to oversee Iraq’s involvement in the Olympics.
Of course, actually meeting deadlines is often unheard of in Iraq, whether it’s for elections or other issues. The Iraqi government had intended to hold provincial elections in October this year, but because of disagreements over an elections law it’s unclear when the polling will take place.
But most Iraqis desperately want the government to resolve these matters so the country’s participation in future international athletic events isn’t in question. Sports, especially soccer, provide one of the few escapes from the daily stress of living in Iraq. Although violence is ebbing, there is still a lack of basic services such as electricity and clean water, while unemployment is high.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, who led a delegation to hold talks with the IOC that brokered the Olympics agreement, said Iraq needed to participate in the Olympics to provide hope to the country and to show that Iraq is slowly shedding its war-torn image.