Football is helping Raqqa return to life
▶ Residents of city devastated by ISIS enjoy new fight played out on a football field, writes Wilson Fache
Younis Al Jassem is concerned. “We are ready but a bit nervous because our opponent is strong,” says Al Jassem, 30, as he jumps into a taxi in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
The car speeds on a dirt road through the wasteland that is his city has become.
Al Jassem is a captain, but not the military kind, and the war he wages takes place on the football field.
A year after ISIS was ousted from its self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa’s Al Shabab football team has reunited. Al Jassem says they are ready to compete in a new championship and show other Syrian cities they can overcome a three-year occupation.
The captain is one of the last to arrive on the football pitch, near the Euphrates River. His teammates greet him with a large smile.
“Our game has been affected by the war,” says Al Jassem, a centre-back. “Players died, others fled to Europe. Some are still missing. But we tried to rebuild our team.
“For us, it is a way of escaping Raqqa’s harsh reality. It’s spiritual sport.”
Since the US-backed Democratic forces led by the Kurds reclaimed Raqqa from ISIS in October last year, moments of bliss have been scarce for residents of the city.
Much of it lies in ruins and civil defence units still have the gruesome task of pulling bodies from the rubble a year after the four-month battle for the city. That is why, for the players and a couple of hundred supporters, today is no ordinary day.
In the inaugural game of the Euphrates Championship, Raqqa is pitted against Manbij, a multi-ethnic city near the Turkish border. The ISIS occupation and shifting front lines in the long fight to dislodge the extremists disconnected these football clubs for years until now.
It is 3.30pm and the referee, also Syrian, is ready to blow his whistle for the kick-off. He has not seen a football pitch in a long time either. Under ISIS rule, referees were forbidden because the militants believed no man should usurp the authority of God.
Other ISIS rules outlawed shirts of western teams such as Barcelona and Real Madrid – who were considered to be infidels – and players would have to abruptly end games during prayer time.
But this game begins and Al Shabab scores in the first few minutes, triggering roars of approval from their fans. But the Manbij team has come to win and quickly regains the upper hand, scoring twice.
Hassan Mehssen, 35, the Shabab coach, pointed out on the eve of the game that Manbij was liberated from ISIS more than a year before Raqqa, so they “had more time to train”.
“They are more prepared than us, but we are playing at home and we have our fans with us. Hopefully we are still going to win,” Mehssen said. At half time he looks livid. “They are good at passing the ball but they lack defence and their goalkeeper is bad,” the coach says.
“All you need to do is focus. What is wrong with you?”
A rejuvenated Al Shabab start the second half in ruthless fashion. A well-taken penalty restores parity, and their third and final goal is welcomed with frenzy.
The crowd of fans jumps as one. They dance and sing to the beat of a drum.
“Thank God,” a supporter shouts, looking to the sky.
Al Shabab will next play against the town of Ain Issa from the Tel Abyad district of Raqqa province. They hope that there will be many more matches to follow.
But they will only be against towns and cities under the control of the Syrian Defence Forces, that have reclaimed large chunks of the Syrian territory from ISIS with the support of the US-led coalition.
The politics of Syria’s protracted civil war prohibit teams from Raqqa from playing clubs living under the Al Assad regime.
“If there is an agreement between the Syrian regime and the SDF, maybe we will be able to send our teams to Aleppo, for example,” says
Anwar Mohammed, co-head of the sports committee at the Syrian Civil Council.
“Otherwise we don’t trust the regime. Maybe they will arrest the teams we send over there.”
In the meantime, local authorities plan on hosting more championships for clubs because reconstruction work is almost complete at the Raqqa stadium, which can accommodate thousands.
Residents had always called it the “black stadium” because of its dark look. But the name took on a whole new meaning when ISIS began using it as a brutal prison complex to torture and kill.
Now, more than 300 construction workers are busy renovating it and the sounds of gunshots have been replaced by those of pneumatic drills.
“It’s very symbolic,” says Shervan Kobani, supervisor of the stadium reconstruction.
“It used to be called the ‘black stadium’ but now we are painting it in white. This whiteness in the middle of the devastation, it’s important for the people of Raqqa.”
But not everyone in Raqqa is pleased at seeing so much money being invested in a stadium when 90 per cent of the city is still damaged.
Those who are unhappy include the team captain.
“The Roman Empire used to give its people games so they would be too busy to think about other things, like politics,” Al Jassem says. “They are doing the same thing here.”
But rebuilding the team does provides some solace for him and others in as much as if one brick is relaid, the rest may follow.
The captain now hopes to attract more talented players to join the squad and fill the void left by those who fled to Germany, were executed by ISIS or died in the battle to remove the occupiers.
“We dare to hope for better.”