The CBC reports that the International Olympic Committee has blocked Iraq from participating in the Beijing Olympics two weeks from now because “the country’s government dismissed officials in favour of its own appointees, who weren’t recognized by the IOC.”
A similar ban was imposed in May — and then repealed — by FIFA, soccer’s governing body, for the same reason.
Iraqi officials readily admit that they’ve appointed their own people to their sport committees, but their excuse seems pretty reasonable to me: 4 of the 11 officials on the Iraqi Olympic Committee had been kidnapped in Iraq’s ongoing chaos, leaving seats around the table that needed filling.
The IOC’s decision is maddeningly shortsighted, and in no one’s best interest. Certainly it’s not in the interests of Iraqis, who impressed the world last year when their mixed Shia/Sunni/Kurdish soccer team worked as a unit to give their tattered nation its first ever Asia Cup championship and its first bit of good news in a long, long time. They beat developed world powerhouses like Australia and South Korea along the way, and briefly united a nation that desperately needed unity — for a short time at least, the people flooding the streets of Iraq weren’t running from some suicide bombing, but coming to together across ethnic divides to celebrate a rare happy chapter in their country’s recent history.
And banning the five athletes that Iraq planned to send is hardly in the world’s interests either — punishing all Iraqis for the actions of kidnappers and inexperienced government officials serves no one, and amounts to a marginalization of a country desperately trying to claw its way back into the international community. Many Iraqis will see this as a slap in the face from a Western-led organization, and with a more than third of Iraq’s Olympic Committee members missing in action, surely some kind of compromise could have been reached.
At the Opening Ceremonies in Beijing, the flags of Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe, North Korea and other crushing regimes will fly proudly over the Beijing Games — as well they should. The Olympic Charter says the Games must help build “a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” I’m not quite so naive as to believe that this is always the case, and the Olympics also play host to a good lot of strutting and national posturing. But the original purpose of the Games, the whole idea behind this venture that tends to lose money and leave billion-dollar fusterclucks in its wake, is to bring together the people of the world — if not their governments — and build an understanding that at the end of the day, we’re all in this together. The IOC ban sends exactly the opposite message, to one of the few countries that could really benefit from the unifying spirit that the Olympics bring.
Image via FOX News: Iraqi soccer fans celebrate their country’s 2007 Asia Cup victory.
2 responses so far ↓
1 B // Jul 31, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Does the IOC really believe that these kinds of technicalities are worth adhering to even when they mean destroying what could be one of the most promising symbols of Iraqi “progress”? Isn’t it the IOC that’s always pushing images of international athletic cooperation as the be all and end all to world conflicts?
2 mark // Aug 4, 2008 at 10:40 am
That’s what makes it so frustrating — particularly since delegations from so many other unsavoury regimes are going to be prancing proudly around at the Opening Ceremonies. FIFA had the sense to repeal a similar ban on Iraq, substituting common sense for a strict adherence to the rules, and it’s a real shame that the IOC’s priorities lie the other way around.
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