The "miracle" of survival of Iraqi sport

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - To reach Bashar Mustafa's office at the headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, you have to pass by the black flags of mourning hanging in the lobby, a reminder of more than 104 athletes killed since 2003.

You also have to get past security guards, a reminder of the threat Mustafa himself faces.

His predecessor as Olympic Committee boss -- former basketball player Ahmed al-Hadjiya -- was kidnapped along with other sport officials by gunmen who stormed a conference in broad daylight in 2006. They are still missing.

Olympic committee deputy secretary general Raad Jabir was gunned down in a cafe in early April while having tea with an athlete and a referee.

Yet somehow, Iraq is determined to make its presence felt at the Olympics in Beijing.

Six Iraqi athletes have already won spots at the Beijing games -- two rowers, a sprinter, a discus thrower, a judoist and an archer. Others still hope to qualify in rowing, weightlifting and wrestling.

They have to train in country where just surviving is difficult, where their reputations and international links make them and their families targets of criminal gangs, and where the infrastructure of fitness and sport has decayed over decades.

"It is a miracle," says Mustafa.

"Some people criticize us for not getting results. But is it possible to practice only two or three days a week and still get results? How can an athlete win an Olympic medal under such conditions? It is difficult, but despite that our hope and will are strong."

Sport has given Iraqis arguably their greatest moment of unity since the fall of Saddam Hussein, when an Iraqi soccer team including members of all its main warring groups defeated a heavily-favored Saudi Arabia to win the Asian Cup last year.

Back in 2004, a year after the U.S.-led invasion, the soccer squad led an Iraqi contingent of about 40 Olympians. But sport in Iraq has only deteriorated since, along with the rise of sectarian violence in the country.

The country's mark in Beijing will be smaller than in Athens four years ago. The soccer team, who came in a remarkable fourth in Athens, failed to qualify this year.

The Olympic committee said last year that 104 athletes had been killed since 2003. More have been killed since those figures were released. Twenty-two Iraqi Olympic officials are listed as missing.

MARTYRS

The bodies of 13 members of the Tae Kwon Do squad were found last June in western Anbar province, more than a year after they were kidnapped.

"None of our sports is without martyrs," Mustafa says. "In Tae Kwon Do, one of the people killed was Wisam Uraibi who had won a bronze medal at the Asian championship. These days, it is so difficult to make a champion."

Iraq has won only a single Olympic medal -- a bronze won by weightlifter Abdul-Wahid Aziz in 1960 in Rome.

Under Saddam, the Olympic committee was run by the dictator's notoriously violent son, Uday.

Hussein al-Amidi, the Olympic Committee general secretary who reports to Mustafa, said the committee building under Uday housed a prison, and officials used their positions to run business deals.

"Definitely, there is a big difference. Now we are concerned only with sport," he said.

All of Iraq's Olympic hopefuls are doing their training abroad because it is unsafe to set up a training camp in Iraq, Mustafa said.

He likes the Iraqi Olympic team's odds in rowing, a sport that is new for Iraq. The team has a new German coach.

But for Iraqi sport to ever reach its potential, it will have to survive the deliberate attacks of people who target athletes as symbols of the country's success.

Mustafa mentions Munthir Khalaf, a soccer coach in western Baghdad killed near his house by unknown gunmen a month ago.

"Terrorists want to target our qualifications and our brains," he said.

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Dominic Evans)

("Countdown to Beijing Olympics" blog at blogs.reuters.com/china )