Eine Manschaft ohne Nation

There has been considerable ink spilt in the last few days over the FIFA decision to ban the Iraqi national team, for a full year, from any international competition. The reason is a reaction to the dissolving of the Iraqi Olympic committee by the central government. The corrupted IC was basically a dead weight, but FIFA and the IOC see this as government intervention in sports affairs, and thus they are banning the teams.

As became clear to me during the writing of my thesis, there is no point where the state is not intervening in sporting affairs - so the point is moot. But that aside, the decision to ban the soccer team seems rather foolish. Not only has the soccer team given Iraq (as a whole) something to be proud of, but they have also proved to be a model of national integration. The presence of the three ethnic groups on the same team, working together as Iraqi's, should be something the west champions, not bans.

Though it is not my personal opinion, if there west wants stability in Iraq, and wants it via the creation of an Iraqi nation, then the soccer team needs to be put in the spotlight. FIFA should be flexible enough to give Iraq some leway for the national team.

But the whole debate is overlooking a fundamental point: how can Iraq even have a national team? Currently, and historically, there has never been an Iraqi nation as such. What has existed is a state, called Iraq, which forcefully made three distinct national identities live together. The attempts to impose the new, post colonial, Iraqi national identity on the population has failed. The removal of Saddam Hussein also removed the proverbial lid that was keeping the various identities in check. Now people have reverted to identity roots that predate Western designs.

In short, soccer, for a brief moment last summer, gave Iraqi's a glimmer of what national solidarity looked like. The success of the team at the Asia Cup had the ethnicities dancing together. But now the West has squashed the national dream of getting to the World Cup in 2010, because the team will not be able to go through the qualifying phase. It seems tragic and unjust for any Iraqi soccer fan; foolish and ill advised from a political standpoint; par for the course in relative terms.

Rob Huges has a good article in the IHT, and there are some posts in the NYT GOAL soccer blog.