Iraqi football player kidnapped in Iraq

This will make you remember NOT to play for an Iraqi football team.

After the Iraq national football team won the 2007 AFC Asian Cup and have something to cheer about for a change, Iraqi football was slammed down back to reality after an Iraqi football player was kidnapped in Baghdad.

Yep, Baha Abdul Karim Darweesh, goalkeeper of the Kirkuk football club, was kidnapped while he was traveling from northern Iraq to visit some of his relatives. It seems not even their own athletes are safe from the terrorism in the country. Just one of those times that will make you realize that it's about time to migrate to another country.

Kirkuk goalkeeper Baha Abdul Karim Darweesh was kidnapped at gunpoint by some Iraqis last week on the outskirts of Khalis. For all ya'll who don't know where the heck Khalis is, it's a Shiite enclave in the volatile Diyala province about 50 miles north of Baghdad.

The Omar Khatab of the Kurdish soccer federation said that the 24-year-old Darweesh lived in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Lately, for some reason, athletes and sports officials have become targets of threats, kidnappings and assassination attempts in Iraq. Some claim that it is as part of retaliatory violence between Shiites and Sunnis or for ransom.

Or maybe, these terrorists-turned-kidnappers just want to make a point that Iraqis should not waste their time playing any kind of sport whatsoever and just train to become the next Saddam Hussein and wait for the next Bush to be elected in the United States of America to fuck him up silly.

Victims of these acts included the Sunni head of one of the leading football clubs in Iraq, an Iraqi football referee, a top player on the Iraqi football team and a national Iraqi volleyball player.

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