Syria

Think of Syria, and some think of civil war, or perhaps the four million people fleeing the country fearing for their lives. Others, though, have a different vision. Of lemon trees, jasmine, fountains ... and rugby.

When civil war started to brew in Syria in 2011, a remarkable thing happened to rugby in the country: it thrived. For years, those who had been running the game in Syria had been told by sceptics that, when the expats left, rugby would disappear. And by midway through 2011, the international community was leaving. In droves. They were pulled out by embassies and companies concerned at the country’s rapid deterioration, which had already seen the Syrian army turn guns and tanks against their own people, in their own cities.  

Yet, against a barely comprehensible background, a small group of Syrians who played rugby – mostly based in the capital Damascus – were about to stage their own, unrelated, act of defiance against the Syrian government, who didn’t believe the sport could survive without being propped up by the international community. With the country in turmoil in every possible way, they would show that rugby could do much more than just survive.  

“Right from the beginning, we were told, ‘rugby will die sooner or later’,” says Mohamed Jarkou, who was the first Syrian to play rugby in the country.  “Because it was a game started by internationals and when they leave [we were told] the game will disappear. We said, ‘no because we are Syrians, we will keep running the game’.” 

Mohamed was one of the twelve players that founded the Zenobians Rugby Club in Damascus in 2004. The other eleven were foreign nationals, drawn from employees at the UK embassy, the French oil giant Total, and American students studying Arabic.  

And now, they had all gone home. Leaving the Zenobians – named after a Syrian queen, Zenobia, who challenged the authority of Rome in the third century – to spread their wings as a rugby club comprised exclusively of Syrians.  

While that might have been daunting at first, Mohamed and his team-mates took to the task with zeal, continuing to train despite the escalating civil war and not only raising enough funds to make their annual pilgrimage to the Dubai 7s that winter, but – with an-all Syrian playing squad – winning the Gulf Men’s Open for the first time.  

But even better than the high of that achievement on the pitch, was what it meant back home. “Once we won, we went to the Syrian Sport Federation and said, ‘we are fully Syrian, with no internationals, and we won the title. We deserve to be established by you guys’,” explains Mohamed. “They agreed to recognise rugby as an official sport in Syria and they established a Syrian High Rugby Committee to start developing rugby in Syria.” 

At a stroke, Syrian rugby had become a legitimate sport in the eyes of its own government. It was a significant breakthrough. 

The newly-formed Syrian High Rugby Committee – which Mohamed began to serve on – got to work in developing rugby, focusing on the game in Damascus initially. For expedience, they concentrated on playing sevens, rather than fifteens.  

By 2015, they had gained membership of their continental governing body, Asia Rugby. And a year after that, they played under the Syrian flag for the first time: at the Asia Development Sevens in India. Then in 2017, the first ever fifteens match was played in the country between two university sides. 

These achievements were coming against the bleakest of backdrops. 

By 2015, more than four million Syrians had fled their nation, making Syrians the world’s largest refugee group in the world. At home, the conflict was intensifying, with the firepower of both the Syrian government and the rebel groups opposing them, such as the Syrian Free Army, being bolstered by international allies. On one side, the government were being supplied with weapons from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, while rebels received support from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and even the USA. Russia’s influence escalated the devastation further, as the Russian air force bombed rebel-held targets in support of the Syrian government; the city of Aleppo in the north of the country becoming a frequent destination for Russian bombs, as Syria’s biggest city became a theatre of war, with pictures of the destruction making headline news around the world.  

Just as troubling as the pictures, were the stories of war crimes being committed during the conflict: chemical weapons attacks, the use of cluster bombs, and the targeting of medical facilities and aid workers. Acts such as these would lead a United Nations report to later conclude that the warring parties “have cumulatively committed almost every crime against humanity... and nearly every war crime applicable in a non-international armed conflict”. 

Yet rugby kept taking steps forward. In 2017, a year when another report of chemical weapons’ usage provoked the United States into launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syrian government air bases, the Syrian High Rugby Committee incredibly managed to start up a women’s programme.  

And that’s when Sara Abdul Baki first came to the sport. Sara is now Syria’s most famous rugby figure having been recognised as a trailblazer for the game, not just in Syria but in the Middle East as a whole. In 2020, she was selected as one of Asia Rugby’s ‘Unstoppables’ having become the first woman to referee a men’s fifteens match in Syria. 

Sara isn’t only a referee. She has also captained Syria as a player, and coaches the Al Arabi club in her home city of Suwayda. She is also the administrative lead for whole of women’s rugby in Syria. She turns 26 next month. 

Back in 2017, however, she hadn’t even heard of the game. Sara had been a tennis prodigy in her youth and ranked second in Syria at under 14s. Then the war began and her access to coaching and facilities disappeared overnight. She drifted away from tennis and sport in general, as the everyday difficulties of life in a war-torn country took hold.  

 Yet because she had been an elite sportswoman in her youth she was on the radar of the Syrian Sports Federation and in late 2017 she was contacted out of the blue about playing rugby.  “The coach who was starting women’s rugby in Syria was looking for players with a history in sports,” says Sara. “He didn’t just want anyone because he was trying out players for the national team. He wanted players who had played a sport before. 

“I had been the second-best tennis player in Syria until age fourteen. I took it seriously; it wasn’t just a hobby. But after the war there were no more tennis tournaments. Sport just stopped. And that took me away from tennis and sports overall.  

“But I went for try-outs in rugby in December 2017,” she continues. “I remember going to the try-outs not knowing what rugby was. I only knew American Football, and what I heard was that it was similar. But now I know it’s completely different! But I was curious to try this sport and afterwards I just kept going to training because I wanted to be more involved. I didn’t know then that I would take this sport as a journey through my whole life.” 

Sara and her team-mates had been training for just four months when they played their first tournament in April 2018: the West Asia 7s in Lebanon, finishing in an impressive third place. 

“For me it was the best tournament that I have ever played in because the passion for this sport started in that tournament,” explains Sara. “We did a great performance even though we had had a very short time [to prepare]. We played many matches and came third.” 

Although she had only been playing the game a short while, Sara soon started taking her badges in refereeing and coaching. 

And it wouldn’t be long before her history-making moment came, when taking up the whistle for a match in the Syrian men’s domestic league between the Zenobians and Palmerians in January 2020. “I studied as though I was in college, every movement, every position a referee needs to be in,” says Sara. “I managed to referee the game, it wasn’t easy but I managed to do it fairly, to make decisions, both teams listened to me and they took me seriously. At the end of the match everyone came and thanked me and they congratulated me on my first match. That was respectful and great. And that’s when I said, ‘I’ve made it.’ 

“It was a huge step for me towards being in a place where I can influence and get more women into rugby. 

“The game made me more known in Asia Rugby and in World Rugby because afterwards I was known as the first Arab-Asian female referee.”  

Sara’s potential to develop rugby in Syria was recognised further with a scholarship from World Rugby. As part of that, she received a golden ticket to do an internship at the Women’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand in 2022, but that’s when the civil war clipped her ambitions again. “I had a letter to go to the World Cup from the New Zealand manager but I got rejected [by the New Zealand government],” she explains. “All countries were afraid that Syrians would become refugees in their country. I also had a chance [to go to] Australia and South Africa. But none of them accepted me. In the end I went to the UAE which was a great experience. Rugby is so well established there, it’s really in their blood.

“It’s one of the big obstacles to us as Syrians, we want to learn new things from countries where rugby is really big. And it upsets you when you are not being allowed to go just because of your nationality. It’s disappointing, because I want to learn.” 

By now Sara is used to having her freedoms restricted, including access to money. When organising a grassroots development forum last year, Sara wasn’t able to receive the money the event host – ChildFund Rugby – was trying to send to her due to international banking sanctions on Syria. 

Instead, she had to wait until she attended a coaching course in Jordan, where no sanctions existed, and withdrew the funds from an ATM, making five separate trips to the cash machine to circumvent the daily withdrawal limit. 

With so many extra obstacles standing in the way, thinking on their feet has become a key skill of Syrian rugby administrators. “We have a half-certain situation in Syria,” says Sara. “We’ve been through war, we’re in an economic crisis, we have challenges day-to-day. So, we have to be flexible. We have to come up with another solution, to keep this sport alive. I had to go to Jordan to pick up money for the forum. Sanctions also mean that companies can’t sponsor us. But food, accommodation, travel all need to be covered. So, I have found two individuals to sponsor us instead. One is in Damascus and one is in Australia. But even now the person in Australia is asking how he can send the money because he can’t send it straight away to Syria. I think I will pay from my own money, and he will send it to me whilst I am in Lebanon.” 

It’s hard to think of any other rugby union that has to go to such lengths to develop the game. But Sara is loath to lament her country’s situation.  “I don’t like it that when people say ‘Syria’ to others, the first that comes in their heads is the war. We’re trying so hard to change this perspective. Syria is not just about war, it’s about rugby, life, energy, sports. So, I tend to not talk about the war most of the time because I don’t want people to see war.” 

Sara does, however, let us into what life has been like for her in Suwayda, one of the cities hit the least by the material effects of war.  “Things happened here of course, we didn’t get out of here with nothing,” says Sara. “But the effect was less than in other cities. Some villages around Suwayda were affected really badly. In the city though, a few bombs happened and there were gun shots all the time. 

“When you hear gun shots, you don’t have true information. You don’t know who is right and who is wrong. All we know is the people who are the victims. I have friends who lost their family members, I have friends whose homes were destroyed. 

“I remember walking down the street not knowing what’s going to happen at any second. An explosion might happen, gun shooting, a bomb might fall on you, and you won’t know where it’s coming from. So, you don’t live in a way that you feel safe or settled, you start thinking about these things which stops you from doing anything else in your life, you know? 

“For me now, if I think about the country I want to live in or what does it look like, the first thing I think about is safety. It’s the hardest thing.” 

One former Zenobians player who doesn’t think of war when she thinks of Syria is the Swedish international hooker Rebecka Lind, who played a season at the club back in 2009. 

For Rebecka, the thought of Damascus conjures up monuments from the ancient world such as the ruins of the Jupiter Temple, and modern street markets beneath giant Roman colonnades, as well as lavish town houses with courtyards filled with lemon trees.  “The old city of Damascus has the most incredible houses you’ve ever seen,” says Rebecka, talking to us from her home in Gothenburg.  “In their inner courtyards, there’s lemon trees and fountains, and jasmine everywhere. When I went to Syria I had no idea what it was like and I was totally blown away by it. There are beaches, historical monuments, bars, nightclubs and the restaurants. In the UK and Sweden it used to be the case that a restaurant was branded Lebanese, but actually it was Syrian. Their food is amazing.” 

Rebecka went to Damascus for her year abroad whilst studying Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. She had heard good things about the Zenobians rugby club and, as an international player at the time, needed a club to join whilst away.  

With no women’s rugby in Syria back then, she joined in with the men, and was given special treatment by her new team-mates, but only for a while.  “For the first few weeks, nobody would tackle me, right,” she recalls. “They would maybe do the hands around the waist to see if I would fall over. 

“But a few weeks in, we were doing a drill where the biggest, tallest guy absolutely speared me. And then it was great. That was my initiation. After that, everyone was happy tackling everyone. 

“It was the best thing I have ever done [going to Damascus], I even got asked to be a sports teacher out there but instead I went back to finish my degree, but then the war started so that wasn’t happening.” 

During her time in Damascus, Rebecka met her future husband Andrew, who also played for the Zenobians. “We started dating and then moved in together whilst we were in Syria,” she explains. “It was definitely an awkward courtship. I actually dislocated his knee in a tackle! “We always ended up on different teams and people would wonder if we’d had an argument because we wouldn’t pull our punches against each other. And he used to get a lot of stick when I stole the ball off him. 

“When we came back, obviously Andrew’s parents loved it when he came home and said he’d met a Swedish hooker in Damascus.” 

Andrew and Rebecka formed such a bond with Syria and their team-mates at the Zenobians that they still intend to realise their dream and return to live there. Although Rebecka wouldn’t be able to play rugby anymore having retired from the game a decade ago after sustaining multiple head injuries. “They are the most amazing caring people [at the Zenobians],” says Rebecka. “Even when the war started, they were so worried when I got my head injury. I was like ‘I’m OK, I am in the UK, there are so many hospitals, this is the start of your war, you really don’t need to spend time worrying about me’, but they did.” 

Rebecka wants to go back to Syria to help develop the sport in any way she can.  “I’ve been talking on and off with [Mohamed] Jarkou about coaching the women’s side which hopefully I’ll go out for a month to do in January next year. But ideally this would be a regular thing I do. And when it’s feasible I want to go back out and live.” 

Sara would certainly welcome the help from Rebecka, as she intends to use rugby to develop a generation of young Syrians who have only known their country at war. 

“I believe that the psychology of how the kids have been affected [by war] is coming up now,” explains Sara. “I think it’s the most important thing we need to focus on. The kids that lived through this war, how are they now? Are they doing well? How did it affect them? Many kids saw things they shouldn’t see and lived through things they shouldn’t have to live through. I think it’s the most important thing [to assess] because it could destroy a whole other generation. 

“You can see many kids now on the streets looking for food or money. Other than giving those kids money, you can bring them to rugby. The values of this game, how to be a good player, a good person. I tell them that whatever you do in another sport you are not allowed to do here. Because rugby has values, it has its own unique character. We have many kids now who are lost and I want rugby to find them. 

“Because rugby really helped me through the war. It was a refuge that helped me leave all the negative things on the field and go home happy. It was something to hang on to.” 

Although there has been no decisive political conclusion to Syria’s civil war, life there is much safer now. As Sara says, “You can’t constitute it as war anymore because it has another aspect now.” 

The other aspect includes a crippling economic crisis that means funding for sports in Syria, let alone emerging sports such as rugby, will remain tight for a long time. 

But if rugby could thrive in Syria among the storms of war, the calmer seas ahead must mean that it is just getting started. 

Story by Jack Zorab

Pictures by  Syrian High Rugby Committee and Getty Images

This extract was taken from issue 22 of Rugby.
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