Inspired by Muhammad Ali, meet the judo star who fled civil war conscription in Syria and will now compete at the Paris Olympics

By Rory Fleming, CNN

(CNN) — It’s almost 60 years since boxing icon Muhammad Ali defied his draft order to join the US military in opposition to his government’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

“Why should me, and so-called other negroes, go 10,000 miles away from home here in America to drop bombs and bullets on other innocent Brown people?” said Ali.

Stripped of his titles and sentenced to five years in prison in 1967, Ali was also banned from boxing for three years. But he was also seen as a voice for the anti-war movement – a leading figure in the US willing to stand up for what he believed in. Decades later, Ali’s influence and actions continue to resonate.

“He was someone who stood up and said ‘no.’ To have that sort of strength was something that inspired me,” says Adnan Khankan ahead of his Olympic judo debut in Paris later this month. Ali was also an Olympian, winning a gold medal in 1960.

Khankan will compete under the flag of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as one of the 37 members of the sporting body’s Refugee Team, who will take part across 12 sports.

The 30-year-old Khankan now calls Cologne in Germany his home. Originally from Damascus, the capital city of Syria, he was forced to flee his homeland back in 2015 following his conscription into Bashar al-Assad’s army as the nation’s brutal civil war spiralled further out of control.

Inspired by the actions of Ali, describing him as a “great man,” Khankan was steadfast in his rejection of any involvement in the civil war which claimed the lives of over 300,000 civilians. The conflict is ongoing.

Conscription into the Syrian Army

“I didn’t see it as my war, how could it be when it was Syrian people killing other Syrian people? It made no sense to me and I said that this was not my fight,” Khankan tells CNN Sport, recalling the day that army recruiters knocked on the door of his family home.

“I thought to myself, why should I have to go and kill my fellow people? War to me is a meaningless thing, so I knew that I would do anything not to become a part of it.

The Syrian Civil War, which initially broke out in 2011, is now considered the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II. Millions remain displaced.

Initially, protestors who were inspired by the region-wide ‘Arab Spring’ movement, demanded that the government, which has been led by Bashar Al-Assad since 2000, enact legislative reforms and release political prisoners.

However, these calls for change were brutally quashed by Al-Assad’s Syrian Army, acting as the genesis for the creation of the Free Syrian Army and thus sparking what is now one the most protracted conflicts of the 21st century.

“When you live in a country like Syria, you don’t have the freedom to really say no. Whatever the government says, you have to do. You don’t have any other choices,” Khankan says.

The death of one of Khankan’s closest friends two years into the hostilities was the moment that irrevocably altered his perspective as to what was happening in Syria. When the war began, he says he was sheltered from the realities of the conflict by his family. That all changed in 2013.

“I was training at the national sports complex and the morning started like any other,” recalls Khankan. “I sat down for breakfast with one of my closest friends, an athlete on the national taekwondo team.

“We then both went our separate ways to training in different parts of the complex. But two hours later, I heard a huge bang and realized that there had been an explosion. Everyone was scared and trying to find out what had happened. It was chaos.”

After discovering that the blast had killed his friend, Khankan came to the realization that he “couldn’t take my life for granted. The same thing could just as easily happen to me at any moment.”

A fraught journey to safety

As Khankan had been representing his country at international level in judo competitions, he was able to negotiate a six-month postponement to his conscription’s start date. And following the death of his friend, Khankan made the decision to flee.

Setting off in the autumn of 2015, at just 21 years of age, he began a month-long journey northwards in search of the sanctity of Europe, travelling by foot, car, truck, bus and train.

After crossing the border into Turkey, Khankan then followed a common refugee route known as the “Balkan Way,” which saw him pass through Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, before ultimately ending up getting arrested at the Hungarian border due to his lack of identification and visa documents.

“My life changed in just the space of a few weeks. I had gone from having everything, to having less than nothing. I found myself in a foreign land, with no way to communicate and no way of getting help,” Khankan recalls.

After spending three nights in detention, Khankan was told that he could either be sent back to Syria or spend six months confined to a refugee camp whilst his processing was completed. So Khankan embarked on a six-month period of confinement in a German refugee camp. The judoka says his family fled to Cairo a few months after he left Syria.

The end of the Olympic dream

Khankan was unable to train as a judoka, or even jog and keep fit in the camp. By the time he was released in early 2016, the Rio Olympics was just a matter of months away.

He was sitting on a sofa as he watched the opening ceremony unfold before the world’s eyes at the Maracanã Stadium.

“I had made it to safety, but all I could think about in that moment was missing out on my dream,” says Khankan.

“When you train for something every day for 20 years, the moment you recognize it won’t arrive is a lot for someone to deal with. I forced myself to watch every day of the Games, even though I cried every single time.”

Khankan was buoyed by the achievement of fellow Syrian Yusra Mardini, who competed for the IOC refugee team at Rio, and vowed that he would do everything within his power to make the team for Tokyo 2020.

“It really motivated me when I found out about the existence of a refugee team,” said Khankan. “I spent everyday training, sometimes two or three times a day, with the goal of making it to the next Games.”

Even without any support from a governing body, Khankan began to climb the ranks and the prospect of qualifying for Japan became a real possibility.

Then in early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic swept across Europe. Germany strictly observed its Covid protocols, resulting in Adnan’s inability to travel to compete, thereby ending his hopes of an Olympic debut.

Misconceptions around refugees

After years of trying to obtain funding for training, a chance email to International Judo Federaton (IJF) President Marius Vizer led to Adnan finally securing the support he needed to help achieve his Olympic dream.

“Adnan is a very hard-working and passionate judoka, with a big heart,” IJF President Vizer told CNN Sport.

“Working with refugees and supporting refugee athletes is a core mission for the International Judo Federation. As I once was a refugee myself, I understand their struggles and their difficult situations. Sports is not only a tool for peace, it is also a tool for betterment of the individual and their life.”

Khankan is acutely aware of the stigma that faces many refugees.

At a time when record numbers of people are being displaced due to ongoing conflicts in places such as Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan against the backdrop of European elections which saw a surge in support for anti-migrant right-wing candidates, Khankan is hoping to highlight the fact that refugees are “just normal people like everyone else.

Last year, over 114 million people were displaced, a record according to UNHCR.

“In the media now, across Europe and even here in Germany, we are told refugees are dangerous, that we shouldn’t be approached, that we are not good people,” he says.

“When one refugee does something bad, it seems like people want to say that every refugee is bad. They don’t do that the other way around for other people which I think is really unfair. With sport, we can try to change this image and perception and the Olympic Games can be a great platform to try and spread this message.

“When people flee other countries and become refugees, they can end up in camps in the Middle East or Africa. Refugees in these other places are starving or have no clothes. There is no hope for them. My hope is that they can see that through sport and the IOC’s refugee program, there are opportunities to change their situation and offer them a better life.”

The very concept of the Olympic Refugee Team should be enough to quell the voices of those who spread anti-refugee sentiment, Khankan adds.

“The refugee team speak different languages, are different ethnicities, come from different cultures, but we are all one team competing together. You have people like me from Syria, standing alongside people from Iran, Afghanistan, Cuba etcetera.

“All these difficult situations in the one team. So, I think that this is an extremely important message to put out into the world, that together we are better and we can achieve great things.”

Ahead of his Olympic debut, Khankan says that, although he holds aspirations of claiming a medal in the -100kg weight division, the mere fact he will be in Paris competing is reason enough to be grateful. Fulfilling a lifelong aspiration which had seemingly slipped away, he sees everything after the July 26 opening ceremony as a bonus.

“The end result is not the most important,” says Khankan. “That is a mistake many athletes make. It just adds unnecessary pressure.

“For me, as someone who lost almost everything, to be here now is surreal. I’m about to compete at the Olympics and I’m living in a safe country with opportunities – I already feel every day like I’ve won a gold medal.”

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