From the Bounmar to the football pitches: How Qaisar Khamis is turning football into a space for recovery
Qaisar Khamis, a football coach from Hit who lost both parents in circumstances connected to illness and ISIS violence, uses community football training to help young people affected by conflict build confidence, discipline, and social ties. The article recounts ISIS’s mass killing of members of the Bounmar tribe and cites estimates of hundreds killed, alongside UN findings that there are reasonable grounds to believe ISIS committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the tribe. Players describe improvements in their confidence, conduct, and commitment through Khamis’s coaching. The initiative operates amid limited psychological support and continuing shortages in schools, sports facilities, and other services for people returning to the area. Khamis says recovery also requires uncovering the truth, recognizing victims, and preventing future atrocities.
Reporting styleInterpretive
Human-interest reporting uses sympathetic framing and presents football as a positive means of recovery, while also including attributed testimony and reported figures.
