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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Top Kurdish PUBG Mobile team Kurd Squad was knocked out of the global PUBG Mobile Club Open tournament on Sunday. Squad members attributed the loss to Germany’s refusal to grant team members from the Kurdistan Region visas, preventing the participation of their top players in the tournament.
“Today, Open Club, the biggest global PUBG mobile tournament was held, for which the world’s strongest teams had to qualify. Kurd Squad was the only Kurdish team to participate,” Ari Khaleel, a top Kurd Squad player who was denied a visa, told Rudaw.
Kurd Squad is a 1000-plus member Kurdish clan, founded in the spring of 2018. Playing PUBG Mobile, a battle royale game, the team are popular among Kurds.
The team qualified in June for the PUBG Mobile Club Open, a worldwide tournament with a pool prize of $2 million dollars, taking second place in the Middle East qualification round.
However, hopes of participation in the tournament, held in Berlin, fast faded when they were refused German visas.
As a result, a second set of Kurdish players, already residing in Europe, took the helm instead, placing last out of 15 teams and bringing their journey to the finals to an end.
“They did their best, and we thank them. We had Kurdistan’s flag behind us in front of the whole world,” said Khaleel.
“We have won multiple Middle East tournaments. However, we couldn’t secure a good result in Club Open because our main team couldn’t get visas,” he explained.
“We feel very, very bad because we didn’t get the result we wanted. If our main players had been there, we would surely have been able to do so much better, and raise the name of Kurds,” asserted Khaleel.
Kurd Squad were not the only squad unable to obtain visas, with Soul Clan, a top Indian PUBG Mobile team, facing the same fate.
Kurds, the world’s largest people without a state, are often unable to take part in international competition as a team. However, PUBG, an online sport, allowed Kurdish players to defy status quo and participate as a Kurdish entity, argued Khaleel.
“We had no one backing us,” he lamented. “However, we are proud to be Kurdish, and we will insist on that for years.”
In the run up to the Open qualifiers, he even claimed that “Arab and Turkish” teams were teaming up against them to deny them a ticket.
Unlike in the Western world, where electronic sports (e-sports) have become a lucrative field, they lack business backing in the Kurdistan Region.
Financial support for the team was so scarce that they printed their team shirts at their own expense.
Their lack of backing made them vulnerable to financial exploitation, Khaleel said, with some organisations subcontracted by consulates, which he did not want to name, asking for bribes in exchange for visa assistance.
The team got in touch with a Kurdish official, who claimed connections in consulates. Later, the Kurdish official claimed that a man in the consulate had asked for the payment of three IPhone Max XS per player - the equivalent of $1,200 each - to have their interviews brought forward, claimed Khaleel.
Despite the fraught journey to the Club Open, Khaleel is optimistic about the team’s future.
“We have re-organized ourselves now. Our sole slogan is, for the sake of Kurds, for Kurds to become famous, we will try to reorganize our team to achieve better results,” added Khaleel.
“We will not abandon our passion and goal.”
Kurds on social media shared their disappointment to Rudaw, rebuking the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) for not doing more.
“If it were me, I would have hoisted the Iraqi flag to spite them [the KRG],” Fahmi Bradosti said.
“[Visas] are available for officials who go to Europe to gamble, but there aren’t any for these accomplished youth who were the top in the Middle East,” Rawand Hassan commented.
"The officials knew they could gain no money out of this, otherwise they would have arranged a visa for them,” Muhammad Sh Muhedin, another local, said.
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