Photo By Sgt. Daniel West | A player from the Karamiyah team kicks the ball during a championship soccer match...... read more read more
By Sgt. Daniel T. West
41st Fires Brigade
FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA, Iraq – A team from the Karamiya District claimed the al-Kut soccer championship, Aug. 28, 2008, defeating the Iraqi police headquarters team 7-6 on penalty kicks.
The championship game concluded a city-wide tournament, sponsored by the IPs and involving 12 community teams and eight IP teams.
The IPs created the tournament as a way to improve relationships between themselves and the citizens of al-Kut, said Capt. Hayder Adnan Ali al-Saidy, the chief organizer for the event.
"We wanted to show them we are human too," said Hayder. "We all come from the same neighborhoods and have the same friends, so why are we fighting?"
The teams come from different neighborhoods in the city some of which have historically been hostile to the IPs.
"Even some of the players on the opposing teams fought us in March," he added. "We told them it was ok to be open about that. Now, we are playing soccer."
"Everything has changed," said Hayder.
"It's the first time we played with IP teams," said Sadeq Husein Ameer, organizer for the Karamiya team. "Before we played with them, we didn't like them because we thought they wanted to arrest us because we live in a poor quarter and our neighbors follow [Jaysh al Mahdi]."
The entire cost of the tournament, including equipment for the community's teams, was provided by the IPs, but there was no room in the official budget for it, said Hayder.
"IPs supported this outside the budget," he said. "Policemen volunteered the money to support the tournament."
"They wanted to send a message to the people," he added. "We are friends; we are human; and we don't hate you."
"Now we respect the IPs and know they respect us, and we hope to help them in our quarter," said Sadeq.
Since the tournament, the IPs have seen increased support in the areas they worked to build teams.
"We felt good playing with them because the citizens are starting to understand that the [IPs] are not their enemies," said Warrant Officer Jbar Abass, one of the organizers for the event. "They said they felt ashamed to have fought us."
"Before the soccer championship, people from these quarters didn't like us, but now we feel safe patrolling there," added Jbar.
The IPs recognized the challenges they faced in the area and decided they could cover more ground in a soccer game than in continued patrols.
"When we organized the tournament, we met with the civilian teams and told them we wanted to prove the police are here to support them," said Hayder. "They told us no one supports them, no one cares."
"We care and have police in the neighborhood to work with them," he said. "We had two reasons for this tournament. We wanted to prove that the IPs are good. We also wanted to show that even though before no one supported these people, now we do."
| Date Taken: | 08.28.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 09.02.2008 08:02 |
| Story ID: | 23113 |
| Location: | AL KUT, IQ |
| Web Views: | 255 |
| Downloads: | 237 |
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