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Sports Academy in Egypt Gives Syrian Children Hope

Syrian refugee Amir al-Awad (white), the co-founder of the Syrian Sports Academy, watches as students train at the academy in Alexandria, Egypt. (Getty Images)
Syrian refugee Amir al-Awad (white), the co-founder of the Syrian Sports Academy, watches as students train at the academy in Alexandria, Egypt. (Getty Images)
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Sports Academy in Egypt Gives Syrian Children Hope

Syrian refugee Amir al-Awad (white), the co-founder of the Syrian Sports Academy, watches as students train at the academy in Alexandria, Egypt. (Getty Images)
Syrian refugee Amir al-Awad (white), the co-founder of the Syrian Sports Academy, watches as students train at the academy in Alexandria, Egypt. (Getty Images)

When Amir al-Awad fled Syria for Egypt, he intended to cross the Mediterranean for a European country.

But instead, the boyhood Syrian wrestling champion opted against the risky sea journey and found work at a restaurant in Alexandria, where he was introduced to the city's Syrian community, reported Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.

Together they established the Syrian Sports Academy, and he replaced his dream of an Olympic medal with a goal to "create champions from the young refugees" from his country, says Awad.

This was "so that one day they will be able to raise their flag as we have in the past after they return to Syria," says the 34-year-old.

The academy is squeezed into just 30 square meters (320 square feet), in a modestly equipped hall at the bottom of a residential building in the Alexandria neighborhood of Khaled bin al-Waleed.

Inside, Syrian children aged of seven to 10 dressed in T-shirts and jeans form a line after arriving at the end of a school day.

"Let's go, guys, so you have enough time to study," Awad yells in encouragement, as he moves on to coaching them wrestling.

With a small administrative office, and the lone training hall, Syrian youngsters practice martial arts, aerobics, ballet, and gymnastics.

In addition, the academy organizes football tournaments, especially for Arab and African refugees in the city.

On its aging walls hang pictures of international martial arts and weightlifting champions.

The academy's founders began the project in 2016 with just 3,000 Egyptian pounds (about $430 at the time), said AFP.

The financing came from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which provided 25 percent used to buy equipment, and the rest from the Caritas humanitarian group.

"We prepared the training hall step by step, including paint and design," says Awad.

The academy's growing reputation in the neighborhood drove Egyptian parents to also enroll their children there.

"We're keen to teach the children sports ethics: to learn how to win and how to lose, which helps them in their life, instead of giving in to a bad lifestyle," he says.

Karima Amer, an Egyptian mother from Khaled bin al-Waleed neighborhood, cited "discipline" as the reason she takes her son and daughter to the academy.

She praised "Captain Amir" and how he "talks with the children about everything: their problems, food, and ethics".

Adel Bazmawi, 21, a co-founder and coach, says he transitioned from a professional wrestling to coaching martial arts after coming to Egypt from Idlib in 2013.

"In Egypt I'm not recognized as a wrestler who can participate in international competitions" given he does not carry the Egyptian nationality, says Bazmawi, who was Syria's freestyle wrestling champion for his age in 2006 and 2008.

Now "the most I can do is to fight in local clubs," he says.

On the other hand, in addition to Alexandria, he says he has become known in other cities, including the Nile Delta provincial capitals of Tanta and Kafr el-Sheikh.

Still, he says "I miss international competitions".

Even after receiving invitations to tournaments in Canada and Germany in 2015, he was unable to go because "Syrian nationality has become an obstacle to obtaining visas to European countries."

There are more than 126,000 UN-registered Syrian refugees in Egypt, but the real figure is thought to be much higher.

Bazmawi, who did not complete his studies in sports education because of the devastating seven-year war in his homeland, helps his family to prepare Syrian shawarma at a restaurant close to the academy.

Those who train the youths go unpaid, something that is unavoidable given that 75 percent of the children are exempt from fees.

"The academy's goal is to be developmental, and not to make a profit," says Awad.

But older youths pay a "token" fee, up to 100 pounds a month, which the academy uses to pay electricity bills and rent, he says.

As busy as they are, Awad says his team "aren't able to compete in various tournaments because of their Syrian nationality," while to participate they need to officially register the academy.

On several occasions, they even had to cancel some activities on police orders, and they lack the licenses for gatherings, he says.

But for Karim Jalal al-Deen, 10, the academy is a place to nurture his dream of going back to Syria one day after perfecting kickboxing.

"I want to go back to Syria as a champion, and beat Captain Adel, and I might even be a kickboxing coach myself."

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Donald Trump Has Sweeping Plans for 2nd Administration. Here's What He's Proposed

FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
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Donald Trump Has Sweeping Plans for 2nd Administration. Here's What He's Proposed

FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Donald Trump has promised sweeping action in a second administration.

The former president and now president-elect often skipped over details but through more than a year of policy pronouncements and written statements outlined a wide-ranging agenda that blends traditional conservative approaches to taxes, regulation and cultural issues with a more populist bent on trade and a shift in America's international role.

Trump's agenda also would scale back federal government efforts on civil rights and expand presidential powers.

A look at what Trump has proposed, according to The Associated Press:

Immigration “Build the wall!” from his 2016 campaign has become creating “the largest mass deportation program in history.” Trump has called for using the National Guard and empowering domestic police forces in the effort. Still, Trump has been scant on details of what the program would look like and how he would ensure that it targeted only people in the US illegally. He’s pitched “ideological screening” for would-be entrants, ending birth-right citizenship (which almost certainly would require a constitutional change), and said he’d reinstitute first-term policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” limiting migrants on public health grounds and severely limiting or banning entrants from certain majority-Muslim nations. Altogether, the approach would not just crack down on illegal migration, but curtail immigration overall.

Abortion Trump played down abortion as a second-term priority, even as he took credit for the Supreme Court ending a woman’s federal right to terminate a pregnancy and returning abortion regulation to state governments. At Trump’s insistence, the GOP platform, for the first time in decades, did not call for a national ban on abortion. Trump maintains that overturning Roe v. Wade is enough on the federal level.

Still, Trump has not said explicitly that he would veto national abortion restrictions if they reached his desk. And in an example of how the conservative movement might proceed with or without Trump, anti-abortion activists note that the GOP platform still asserts that a fetus should have due process protections under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. That constitutional argument is a roadmap for conservatives to seek a national abortion ban through federal courts.

Taxes Trump’s tax policies broadly tilt toward corporations and wealthier Americans. That’s mostly due to his promise to extend his 2017 tax overhaul, with a few notable changes that include lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15% from the current 21%. That also involves rolling back Democratic President Joe Biden’s income tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans and scrapping Inflation Reduction Act levies that finance energy measures intended to combat climate change.

Those policies notwithstanding, Trump has put more emphasis on new proposals aimed at working- and middle class Americans: exempting earned tips, Social Security wages and overtime wages from income taxes. It’s noteworthy, however, that his proposal on tips, depending on how Congress might write it, could give a back-door tax break to top wage earners by allowing them to reclassify some of their pay as tip income — a prospect that at its most extreme could see hedge-fund managers or top-flight attorneys taking advantage of a policy that Trump frames as being designed for restaurant servers, bartenders and other service workers.

Tariffs and trade Trump’s posture on international trade is to distrust world markets as harmful to American interests. He proposes tariffs of 10% to 20% on foreign goods — and in some speeches has mentioned even higher percentages. He promises to reinstitute an August 2020 executive order requiring that the Food and Drug Administration buy “essential” medications only from U.S. companies. He pledges to block purchases of “any vital infrastructure” in the US by Chinese buyers.

DEI, LGBTQ and civil rights Trump has called for rolling back societal emphasis on diversity and for legal protections for LGBTQ citizens. Trump has called for ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government institutions, using federal funding as leverage.

On transgender rights, Trump promises generally to end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, without evidence, is widespread. But his policies go well beyond standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth.

Regulation, federal bureaucracy and presidential power The president-elect seeks to reduce the role of federal bureaucrats and regulations across economic sectors. Trump frames all regulatory cuts as an economic magic wand. He pledges precipitous drops in US households’ utility bills by removing obstacles to fossil fuel production, including opening all federal lands for exploration — even though U.S energy production is already at record highs. Trump promises to unleash housing construction by cutting regulations — though most construction rules come from state and local government. He also says he would end “frivolous litigation from the environmental extremists.”

The approach would in many ways strengthen executive branch influence. That power would come more directly from the White House.

He would make it easier to fire federal workers by classifying thousands of them as being outside civil service protections. That could weaken the government’s power to enforce statutes and rules by reducing the number of employees engaging in the work and, potentially, impose a chilling effect on those who remain.

Trump also claims that presidents have exclusive power to control federal spending even after Congress has appropriated money. Trump argues that lawmakers’ budget actions “set a ceiling” on spending but not a floor — meaning the president’s constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws” includes discretion on whether to spend the money. This interpretation could set up a court battle with Congress.

As a candidate, he also suggested that the Federal Reserve, an independent entity that sets interest rates, should be subject to more presidential power. Though he has not offered details, any such move would represent a momentous change to how the US economic and monetary systems work.

Education The federal Department of Education would be targeted for elimination in a second Trump administration. That does not mean that Trump wants Washington out of classrooms. He still proposes, among other maneuvers, using federal funding as leverage to pressure K-12 school systems to abolish tenure and adopt merit pay for teachers and to scrap diversity programs at all levels of education. He calls for pulling federal funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

In higher education, Trump proposes taking over accreditation processes for colleges, a move he describes as his “secret weapon” against the “Marxist Maniacs and lunatics” he says control higher education. Trump takes aim at higher education endowments, saying he will collect “billions and billions of dollars” from schools via “taxing, fining and suing excessively large private university endowments” at schools that do not comply with his edicts. That almost certainly would end up in protracted legal fights.

As in other policy areas, Trump isn’t actually proposing limiting federal power in higher education but strengthening it. He calls for redirecting the confiscated endowment money into an online “American Academy” offering college credentials to all Americans without a tuition charges. “It will be strictly non-political, and there will be no wokeness allowed,” Trump said on Nov. 1, 2023.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid Trump insists he would protect Social Security and Medicare, popular programs geared toward older Americans and among the biggest pieces of the federal spending pie each year. There are questions about how his proposal not to tax tip and overtime wages might affect Social Security and Medicare. If such plans eventually involved only income taxes, the entitlement programs would not be affected. But exempting those wages from payroll taxes would reduce the funding stream for Social Security and Medicare outlays. Trump has talked little about Medicaid but his first administration, in general, defaulted to approving state requests for waivers of various federal rules and it broadly endorsed state-level work requirements for recipients.

Affordable Care Act and Health Care As he has since 2015, Trump calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and its subsidized health insurance marketplaces. But he still has not proposed a replacement: In a September debate, he insisted he had the “concepts of a plan.” In the latter stages of the campaign, Trump played up his alliance with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines and of pesticides used in US agriculture. Trump repeatedly told rally crowds that he would put Kennedy in charge of “making America healthy again."

Climate and energy Trump, who claims falsely that climate change is a “hoax,” blasts Biden-era spending on cleaner energy designed to reduce US reliance on fossil fuels. He proposes an energy policy – and transportation infrastructure spending – anchored to fossil fuels: roads, bridges and combustion-engine vehicles. “Drill, baby, drill!” was a regular chant at Trump rallies. Trump says he does not oppose electric vehicles but promises to end all Biden incentives to encourage EV market development. Trump also pledges to roll back Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.

Workers’ rights Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance framed their ticket as favoring America’s workers. But Trump could make it harder for workers to unionize. In discussing auto workers, Trump focused almost exclusively on Biden’s push toward electric vehicles. When he mentioned unions, it was often to lump “the union bosses and CEOs” together as complicit in “this disastrous electric car scheme.” In an Oct. 23, 2023, statement, Trump said of United Auto Workers, “I’m telling you, you shouldn’t pay those dues.”

National defense and America’s role in the world Trump’s rhetoric and policy approach in world affairs is more isolationist diplomatically, non-interventionist militarily and protectionist economically than the US has been since World War II. But the details are more complicated. He pledges expansion of the military, promises to protect Pentagon spending from austerity efforts and proposes a new missile defense shield — an old idea from the Reagan era during the Cold War. Trump insists he can end Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, without explaining how. Trump summarizes his approach through another Reagan phrase: “peace through strength.” But he remains critical of NATO and top US military brass. “I don’t consider them leaders,” Trump said of Pentagon officials that Americans “see on television.” He repeatedly praised authoritarians like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.