Iraq’s Basra Sports City project firmly on track

Dubai: Iraq’s Minister of Youth and Sport has said that reconstruction of sports infrastructure in his country is in full swing at the moment.

From the building of the brand-new Basra Sports City, which has the capacity to house 10,000 athletes, to the funding of 300-odd clubs with an annual allocation of 50 billion Iraqi Dinars (Dh158 million), the rebuilding process is on a sure footing, Jasem Mohammad Jaffar said on the second day of Peace and Sport Forum in Dubai on Wednesday.

“The construction of the Basra Sports City has just begun and once complete, it will be one of the main infrastructures in our country to consolidate Iraq’s position in the world of sport,” he said.

“Our government has laid out two main visions: one is to continue tackling the issue of keeping our youth away from drugs and the second is to provide our youth with opportunities to pursue sport at the highest levels,” Jaffar added.

Despite its invasion and occupation by allied American forces, which led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussain regime in 2003, Iraq has managed to hold its sway as one of the dominant nations in Asian sport.

After ending in fourth place at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games football, Iraq took the silver medal at the 2006 Doha Asian Games and peaked at the 2007 AFC Asian Cup defeating Saudi Arabia in the final in Jakarta, Indonesia.

At the beginning of this year, Mohammad Al Da’ami, Member of the country’s Sport and Youth Parliamentary Committee, announced a Parliamentary endorsement of the Pioneer Athletes’ grants law to help future sporting achievements.

In another positive development last month, the President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) Shaikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah formally announced the lifting of the ban on Iraqi — resuming all sporting activities and ties with the West Asian giant.

Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s government has pumped in millions of dollars to reconstruct and build stadia all over the country.

Of the 20 projects taken up so far, the 65,000-seater Basra Sports City is the most ambitious — along with the 60,000-seater Tajiyat Stadium in Baghdad.

Smaller capacity stadia are also being built in the major cities of Anbar, Diyala, Karbala, Nassiriya, Ninevah, Hilla and Al Najaf as tertiary support to the main facilities.

“The focus for us is our youth. We need to give them the opportunities. The work of providing them with adequate facilities is on and it will be just a matter of time when Iraq will again enjoy its domination on the sporting stage,” the minister affirmed.

“In our toughest times, Iraq has proved that its sportspersons can perform as seen by the performances of our football team for example,” the minister pointed out.