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Peace On The Football Field
The Guardian- September 17, 2003, The tone of mockery in your report on Sven-Goran Eriksson's intention to use football for conflict resolution (The UN can't do it, September 15) needs some qualifying.
There are places fraught with conflict - Somalia is one - where people are promoting football in deadly seriousness as a means of preventing young men from taking up guns and being sucked into the warlord militias. Compared to a warlord, David Beckham is a highly desirable role model.
The football-for-peace idea is echoed by authority figures throughout the country. The headmaster of a school in Merca, in the troubled south, says that when the boys play football, they learn how to have a contest, which is not a conflict. This encourages integration between rival clans. In Somaliland, youth organizations used a football tournament to end gang violence, which was terrorizing the inhabitants of Borama.
It would be naive to think football can end "global"' conflict, whatever that is. But it can help defuse the contagion of mini-conflicts based on clan or ethnic difference, which fuel civil wars. Many organizations working with young people in conflict zones would bear this out, including UNICEF. There are many candidate teams in Somalia for the ball which Eriksson is about to present to Kofi Annan. I'm sure the headmaster in Merca would be delighted if he would pass it on.
Maggie Black
Oxford
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