i deeply affected i leave the city with its new born monsters. we head for baghdad on the banks of the tigris. baghdad can be translated as the garden of peace. but it's a better fragile peace the patrols or iraqi wearing uniforms supplied by the us the army is divided by political religious and tribal conflicts everyone fights for his own camp. the president is kurd the prime minister shia and the parliament is run by sunnis. in paradise square opposite the royal mosque stands

a concrete pedestal. here once through the absolute symbol of power a statue of saddam hussein. on april ninth two thousand and three it was torn to the ground and the united states believed it of wonder will. nine years have passed the square is empty and the city appears to be in a state of siege. oh is that our passenger alley a theater director back from exile in paris waited for a long time to see his enemy fall and return to his native city. where i was thrown in prison and when i got out i was given five days to leave baghdad and iraq that get me there. but for ali the combat continues. and it's through theater the. hopes to win it is methodist to reinvest the public

with a sense of resistance and a taste for life. i don't doubt. that ability day i see a country filled with weapons the overriding color in the city is khaki the color of soldiers. i see young people with no future men and women deprived of any feeling of citizenship think their own people have forgotten their rights and their duties. as if they were lost but i completely lost. not. more time to be doing your shoulder but more than that. in baghdad no one knows who the enemy is anymore sunni's she is islamists christians each with their armies and militia each fighting the other. and i don't know i know some short guys who joined al qaeda just to get some money. so out of

the car then the model of several gives them money whereas the government abandons them by the thumping of laws. that paid to kill here on that floor. about michelle obama so they've ruined their futures that lives and their families find out oh my while home. my for nothing goes. on october thirty first twenty ten a terrorist group claiming all kind of affiliation occupied the catholic cathedral in baghdad. five suicide bombers activated their explosive belts fifty eight people were killed. in nine. years of occupation of civil and religious wars and attacks of caused more

than one hundred ten thousand victims essentially civilian. syriac khaldiyeh and orthodox and armenian churches have become choice targets. al qaeda assassins and sunni and shia fanatics agree on nothing except on effecting the christians they accuse of being western crusaders. baghdad is a raising its illustrates christian past. checkpoints abound every hundred meters crossing baghdad is a permanent obstacle course. but i think iraq is a battlefield for an array of foreign forces. iran supports the shia brothers while

saudi arabia age there as the sunnis. for the month i live in. a sunny district. in two thousand and six i was all for. it was subjected to rocket fire at least fifty rockets falling on us every day it never stopped. you know me the streets were filled with corpses and there was fighting everywhere to show. you know their ideas of a new the battles raged for seventy two hours you know. al-qaeda the army the militia everyone was fighting men. abandoned bodies became prey fit to be devoured by stray dogs that my little girl saw dogs eating the dead which i had never seen before in my life packet which has left me ritual for just a few apathetically. living in baghdad means surviving attacks but it's also an everyday battle. in the capital of the world's. the biggest oil producer the

electricity system works for just a few hours a day. the best business in trial is selling generators. for khaled my driver a visit to the barber after ten days on the road should be a moment to relax a moment of peace but nothing is that simple. yes quite simply hell here sheer hell. it's not a normal life like other people have around the world. may god act to improve things what do you say to the good of will know for sure god is good that. even.

the schoolteacher she's invited us to dinner. i'm. going out of twenty years of war how have you got through it as a woman. i grew up in email on your head and how first the war with iran then the embargo and the two american intervention i sound. a little but my first in one thousand nine hundred and the second in two thousand and three. for the iran war my brother was arrested and there was just my dad to take care of the family all those girls had no work my father ran a small business. we barely grown up when the embargo strangle the whole country can you imagine no fruit or vegetables meat we couldn't afford and fish even more so. it's only today that i can buy it but we have a. didn't safety the women could move about without any problem we had peace but in

poverty i think that. that's really fun i want. to. come up in this one it's my wife is devout but as we have guests i can drink we may be poor but we still have a sense of hospitality. abdu in zara a sunni and a shia from the rest couple today war and religion have also imposed by hundreds on love. as the lights go out once again the neighborhoods back up generators take over as do all measures that give. not in the thing that we were hearing. on shia my husband assume must have had now after the war the two religions can't intermarry anymore and even that's and it

wasn't the case before and what was important was the people of the each other and what's the distinction between shia and sunni thinly it shameful treating people this way in iraq where all muslims must live. and so what a muslim man asks for the hand of a muslim woman according to islamic tradition my friend that's all but i think how it was at the end of the war that this division appears shia sunni. but yet now we've come to threats to take it how does a sunni there nary a shiite is that we're seeing as we look at that what if the alternative is to get divorced or dalek you know if you don't agree to get divorced you risk death you can think you're going to janish if not in our neighborhood they shot a woman in front of her husband and children for the unique reason she was shia and he was sunni steps you know she.

this morning i'm not just leaving baghdad i'm fleeing baghdad. but the city gates the soldier who checks up passports tells us yet another attack a scar to the capital. was. another checkpoint on the road to babylon we present our passports and passes. a country apprehensive. the sky is like twilight i feel like i'm wandering in the kingdom of the dead it's raining sand. prayers have punctuated each day on the road i sleep while he converses with his god.

amidst the wind blown sand appears the mythical city of babylon. in his delusions of grandeur saddam hussein emerged himself to be its king the heir to throw the president of the iraqi republic saddam hussein in one nine hundred eighty eight inaugurated the restored city of babylon first built by nebuchadnezzar between six o four and five sixty two b.c. . at the height of his power like the ancient kings before him. palace in the heart of the legendary city . his tower of babel crashed down around him in the dust of pride and ambition. his memory has been left to the ravages of time and the insults of his survivors.

choose your language. for a week you know if there is still some honest. truth to the concerns you can. choose the opinions that invigorated your mind. choose the stories that in high school life choose be access to your office. when their own country come to offer them a living loving mothers sometimes have to leave their children behind. i don't like to wonder. if the dream of millions of. children might choose their own motherland. i want my children to win over moscow. russia has become their step mother land.

to find a way home. at the end of the road lies the mecca vatican and medina of the shia world.

but something of god and other al qaeda is the real enemy of iraq and even of all the arab regions i don't believe several terrorist organizations have been exported by neighboring countries i don't know what they are responsible for so many victims since baghdad fell. and i would stress that most of the attacks have targeted the shia community not just in one of the. pilgrims are well protected here all the officers and soldiers are shia. several million faithful including many from iran come every year to visit the mosques in karbala a boon for the holy city. religion is a river of gold as the saying goes. we don't know what it's obvious that when a country's native sons defend it things go better and they're always better than an occupier. and invader always has trouble understanding the country they occupy and as the air proverb says no one knows the roads of mecca better than its own

inhabitants an image that shouts i have it if i have it. it's this it's. the main prayer takes place in the hussein most. the interim sermons a political resonance and a broadcast throughout iraq and the shia world and. the shias today are imposing their numbers and their power. in the prayers always end with cries to the glory of the prophet hussein the son of . allegedly designated by mohammed to be is only successor you never heard. that. but many on under saddam

a million shares were detained and many of them were assassinated then thrown into mass graves and. i myself your servant spent twelve years in iraqi jails my family only received news of me one or two years after i was released. i was even afraid of my own brother i thought he was an officer who come to interrogate me all about us we suffered and the prisons were filled with shias only when every. living cabal is like crossing a graveyard. everywhere all portraits of shia month has fallen for the glory of the prophet who say mohammed's a. little bit. possible

. on the back to pass rush highway in the middle of the desert our faithful taxi finally gives up the ghost. i feel suddenly vulnerable alone in the wilderness. as if by magic a man appears from the sands to help us. perhaps this is the renowned a desert hospitality. we had for a camp for the men who maintain the highway once they were all soldiers and saddam's army. when the americans came many deserted. and.

without knowing who we are to make room for us to share that. with out of massive iraqi army was hunger thirst and fatigue. remember your family was taken hostage or she deserves it. you horrible new days when they called people who ran away they were simply hang on. i spent seven years in the army and it was very tough. in santa most days a soldier was paid two thousand dinars less than the bank he was carrying was worth we can definitely say we were really miserable at the moment not a lot of. the highway splits the desert and on each side of the road to bask in the vast oil fields of rumaylah and mushroom. more than

half of iraqi production is pumped from this burning desert a treasure chest within the sound. channel b.p. exxon mobil and the chinese soon a pack of already got their hands on the bulk of it. at last we reach bastrop where the euphrates and the tigris meet. travelers once called the city the venice of the south. who comes to kill us and destroy our country and good it before we said it the americans but the americans have gone and now my general so who else is continuing the job of a that nobody knows of there's no work in the situation is unlivable i say yes it

was better before. conversely if we talk about security and civic respect we can say it was a hundred percent better under saddam. today there's no respect for the citizens and as if we were no longer men that's the truth that's honestly what i feel. we are less and less respected before an iraqi could walk with his head held high anywhere in the world and especially at home as long as the state was not affected or undermined things have changed a lot i can tell you that the situation was much better before. the venice of the self was awash with detritus of all kinds half of the inhabitants are unemployed it's a humanitarian and social disaster area. here we have absolutely nothing. where we going but at that event in this oil rich country we can't find work there this is how we live the children of this country why is it

fair does god accept this master is in the middle of all the country's oil wealth it's like the mother of oil but he doesn't seem to gain from it that the inhabitants are poor and the streets are filled with the unemployed and it. was once one of the richest cities in iraq today it seems to have been forgotten by both god and mankind because of oil is cruel indeed. and yet in the heart of the shantytowns is always given freely. and sweet offering .

by our government isn't he and when it could i think government doesn't take care of the poor and is only there to save itself until it sound pockets i do expect things to change what. might have no minister has taken the trouble to come and see us to ask how we survived or ask us if we. need and i think we have nobody to talk to. and so since the americans left the poor in the powerless to join the militia and the terrorist groups who at least provide money and protection. everywhere in the city are portraits of the shia. and saddam his radical troops feed on poverty.

the road ends at our files on the banks of the push and gulf and the end of our journey. this is the outback oil terminal rising from the water far from terrorist attacks and on a constant military surveillance where iraq's fortune oil flows in and out. the country's fortune and perhaps misfortune two. wars here have always been closed in the same color black. and foul was at the mouth of the shuttle our best during where the tigris joins the euphrates forming the border with a ramp. on the iranian bank a gigantic portrait of the m.m. how many is there to talk to us a reminder that americans have gone leaving pandora's box wide open.

been especially on me personally i never thought an old collaborated with the americans. with job would show where i work i am and always have been a taxi driving us. i cross the country no. to south gentle friends i thought i'd follow all taxi i go wherever i can find work have that i don't hesitate god be praised all i want to still live my. twenty days on the road perhaps one hundred checkpoints. with my friend khaled we've crossed a country which is officially no longer at war but where peace is not being restored a country divided by sectarian shia sunni and kurd communities a country where tara is a daily issue. from

zoho they'll be ill so we're manya kook muscle to create for. baghdad babilonia kabbalah as far as i'll file we've traveled a road where danger is ever present. khaled was under the protection of his god and me maps of providence.

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