COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Denmark is carving out a name in martial arts, thanks to a large number of Kurdish champs who are representing their adopted country at regional and international competitions.
Of the many Danish champions in boxing, Thai boxing or kickboxing, a large number is from the sizeable community of Kurdish immigrants in Denmark.
For Jiar Ali, a 16-year-old born in Denmark whose family comes from Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan, nothing can match the feeling of winning in the boxing ring.
“There is no better feeling,” he told Rudaw. “And it's not something you can get with money, but only through discipline and hard training.”
The teenager became Danish champion in Thai boxing in 2012, Scandinavian champion in 2012 and again Danish champion last year for the second time. Last month he fought for Denmark at the World Championship in Malaysia, where he won his first match against New Zealand but lost the second game.
Ali recalled being inspired at a very young age by movies featuring Bruce Lee or Jean Claude Van Damme. He started kick boxing at 10, and changed to Thai boxing two years later.
Adel Juanmiry, 19, a Kurd from Kermanshah in Iran, became the Danish Thai boxing champion this year. After this summer, he will be representing his country at the European Championship in Poland.
"I watched a lot of martial arts movies in our refugee camp in Iraq and it inspired me," said Adel, who will be attending high school in Copenhagen after the summer holidays.
“You have to constantly keep in shape,” he said about the challenges of Thai boxing. “I run an average of 30 miles (about 50 kilometers) a week."
Heva Sharif, 21, began boxing when he was 12, despite opposition from his worried mother, who fears he might get hurt. He has won many Danish championships and last year was voted "best fighter" at an event.
He believes that boxing is a good way of letting off steam.
"I love to get down to the club and let off steam on sandbags instead of reacting on the outside," he said.
Sharif, who usually works as a mason, is from the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja, where an estimated 5,000 people were killed in a 1988 poison gas attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces, including Sharif’s grandmother, uncle and aunt.
"At least once a year I break my own nose and I've also got a black eye a few times," he told Rudaw. "It's good for young people to join a boxing club, instead of hanging out in the street."
Barzani Osman, an 18-year-old who this month won the Danish Championship in amateur boxing, loves the sport, but is under no illusions about the hazards of competing.
"You can get head injuries, especially when you get older," said Barzani, who came to Denmark from Afrin in northern Syria at age three, and has so far suffered only a wrist injury.
Delwar Mizori, who won the Scandinavian Championship in kickboxing five times – including his last win with a broken foot – remembered being a troublemaker in school, always fighting with the others.
"But now I'm calm and proud to be the person I am today," said Mizori, who is 24 and was born in the city of Mosul in Iraq, where his father was a Karate teacher.
He has been kickboxing for three years, in the national team for five and a winner of several other championships. He hopes one day to become World Champion.
Mizori believes there are so many Kurds succeeding at martial arts because fighting has been a part of the Kurdish past.
"Throughout our history we as Kurds became used to war, so we are good at fighting,” he said.
