Iraq (IRQ)

Iraq formed its National Olympic Committee (NOC) in 1948, which was recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on 27 July of the same year at the IOC session in London and also made its first Olympic appearance in that year. It then did not compete until the Roma Olympics of 1960. The nation missed the 1972 and 1976 Olympics but has competed continuously since, including the 1984 Olympic Games. Iraq has never competed at the Olympic Winter Games. One Iraqi athlete has won an Olympic medal, that being a bronze medal by Abdul Wahid Aziz in lightweight weightlifting in 1960. Perhaps the greatest performance by Iraqi Olympic athletes occurred at the 2004 Olympic Games. Shortly after their country was invaded and fought a war, resulting in the ouster of President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi qualified a football (soccer) team for Athens. The team was known to have suffered torture in recent years at the orders of Oudaï Hussein, president of the Iraqi NOC and son of Saddam, whenever they did not perform well, which caused the NOC to be briefly suspended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). But at Athens, the Iraqi football team went to the semi-finals, and narrowly lost out on a medal, finishing fourth.

On 15 July 2006 the NOC president Ahmad Al Samarrai, a Sunni, was among others who have been kidnapped in the centre of Baghdad and disappeared without a trace. He was replaced by Mustapha Bashar, a Kurd. In 2008 Iraq was suspended by the IOC from competing at the Beijing Olympics, but the ban was lifted later when Iraq promised to hold free elections for its NOC under international observation.