Cockfighting is still a popular blood sport in southern Iraq

Two vicious roosters circle a dirty carpet in southern Iraq in a cockfight that has drawn dozens to a dimly lit cafe in the port city of Basra.

“This practice has been around since I was born in 1949,” said referee Riad Ali, whose father introduced him to cockfighting when he was about 10 years old.

The popular blood sport “dates back to the 1920s or earlier” in Basra and is believed to have arrived in the port by boats, he added.

Banned in many parts of the world due to animal cruelty concerns, cockfighting is widespread from the Philippines to India and tolerated in areas including parts of northern France.

An AFP photographer witnessed several fights in Basra, in which red-crested roosters engaged in a violent dance, leaving bloodstains on their feet and necks as they jumped and pecked at each other.

Spectators in narrow seats near the feather-studded red and yellow ring sipped tea as they watched, the smell of cigarettes and hookahs filling the air.

The bird fights can last an hour or two and end when the birds are exhausted or when one of the owners retires their pet, said Ali, who has been an amateur cockfighting referee for about two decades.

Pensioner Naji Hamza said he had taken part in cockfights since the 1970s, even though they were banned during the time of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator who was ousted after a US-led invasion in 2003.

“We were in isolated houses, not in the café or in public,” said the 70-year-old.

Islam forbids gambling, and in conservative, Muslim-majority Iraq, it’s usually the pet owners who place the bets, wagering between 25,000 and 100,000 dinars ($17-$68) per bout — though viewers sometimes get a flutter, too.

Mohammed, a 51-year-old mechanic who declined to give his last name, said he’s had birds in the ring since the early 1990s and bought his three roosters in Turkey for between $900 and $1,100 each.

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“We come to the café in the evening and spend an hour or two. We see our friends,” he said.

“It’s a pastime, a winter pastime,” he added.

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