In a country beset with cultural divisions and Muslim difficulties, it is hard to imagine that a little white and black ball could hold the answer to the nation’s issues. Rising from a difficult past under the Hussein regime to win the 2007 Asian Football Confederation Asian Cup, the team has overcome amazing odds and continues to be a unifying factor for the nation’s divided people. Could the Iraqi soccer team still hold a future for the Iraqi people?

In the 1970s and 1980s, Iraqi soccer had reached its zenith and was considered to be in its golden era, qualifying for the 1986 World Cup, three Olympic Games, and several other important tournaments. Upon the rise of Saddam Hussein’s regime, his son Uday Hussein became the head of the Iraqi Olympic Team and incidentally the Iraqi Football Federation. He ushered in a dark period of brutality and terror on the Iraqi team that put the national football team at its lowest. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, players have come together to bring an amazing comeback to a country that needs it.

The unique position that the Iraqi soccer team holds is largely due to the fact that many of the players have sustained personal loss throughout the Iraqi wars and yet they still continue to succeed. Nearly every player in the team that won the 2007 Cup had personal losses from the Iraqi-Iran War. In July, a player was arrested in the nearby country of Bahrain, where the 16-year-old Zulfiqar Naji trained with one of the Bahraini coaches. The Iraqi foreign minister is demanding the details of this detention, but it remains yet to be seen how the Bahraini government will respond.

Based on their track history, it is very likely that the Iraqi team will again rally their nation behind them and come from insurmountable odds to again be one of the elite soccer teams in the world. They will continue to be a symbol of life and hope and unity in a nation that in so many ways is still divided.