Soccer field of dirt Army paid $1.1 million for?

In Baghdad, a $1.1M US-funded soccer field turns to dirt
The Washington Post
By Loveday Morris
Published: May 17, 2014

BAGHDAD — As the beating heat of the day gives way to night, the soccer fields of Sadr City swarm with young men partaking in what is no doubt Iraq's favorite sport.

The evening bustle in this cramped and impoverished Shiite neighborhood looks far different from the worst days of Iraq's sectarian violence, when some of these pitches were instead killing fields.

For Haider Jameel — janitor by day, soccer coach by evening — one of the patches of land, among a jumble of mechanic shops and scrap yards, has been a back yard for decades.

It went unused only during the grimmest periods of civil war, which peaked in 2006. The Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-U.S. cleric for whom the neighborhood is named, would use the area to stage attacks. Those the fighters kidnapped were often executed by a nearby dam.

But when the violence subsided, the Iraqi government and the United States began pumping in millions of dollars to clean up Sadr City. That's when the scrap was cleared to make Jameel's makeshift neighborhood pitch into a full-size soccer field.

The contractor who built the field — who did not want to be identified, out of fear for his safety — said he was paid $1.1 million for the job by the U.S. Army. But it's difficult to see where that money went, despite his assurances that the site was once in a better state of repair.

There are no lights, no bleachers, no showers. The boys who play here use a nearby shop to wash.

When it rains, the field floods and local residents chip in to buy new dirt to resurface it.
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