the city with its newborn monsters. we head for baghdad on the banks of the tigris. baghdad can be translated as the garden of peace. but it's a bitter fragile peace the patrols are iraqi wearing uniforms supplied by the u.s. 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 wonderful. nine years of past 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 jimmied it. but for ali the combat continues. and is through theatre that he hopes to win it is methodist to reinvest the public with a sense of resistance and a taste for life. i met out. there. today 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 figure on 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 army is a militia each fighting the other. and i don't know i know some of your guys who joined al qaeda just to get some money. so out of the car then to most. of several al qaeda gives them money whereas the government abandons them by the thumping of laws. that paid to kill here on their.

show about it so they've ruined their futures that lives and their families find out. 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 a cause more than one hundred ten thousand victims a century civilian. syria

khaldiyeh an orthodox and armenian churches have become choice targets. al qaeda assassins and sunni and shia fanatics agree on nothing except on evicting 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 a ray of foreign forces. iran supports the shia brothers while saudi arabia age there's the sunnis. and as for the month i live in. a sunny district.

in two thousand and six i was all for. it was suggested to rocket fire at least fifty rockets falling on us every day it never stopped. me the streets were filled with corpses and there was fighting everywhere to show. you know their ideas of a new the battle raged for seventy two hours in. the army the militia everyone was fighting men to abandon 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 the apathetically. living in baghdad means surviving attacks but it's also an everyday battle. in the capital of the world's third biggest oil producer the electricity system works for just a few hours a day. the best business in china 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 so what do you say to the good of the not for sure god is good and. evil. but i'm. sure the schoolteacher she's invited us to.

get out of twenty years of war how have you got through it as a woman. i grew up in a male on your head. first the war with iran and 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 strangled 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 lived in safety the women could move about without any problem we had peace but in poverty i think that there's anything that. john i want. a lovely little

one that 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 and zara a sunni and a shia from around 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. and do all. that. none not one thing that we were hearing. on shia my husband a sunni muslim 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 that people loved each other and what's the distinction between shia and sunni thinly it's

shameful treating people this way in iraq while muslims there was. so what a muslim man asks for the hand of a muslim woman according to islamic tradition by far and 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 headed how does a sunni there an area 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 could 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 said that you know she. this morning i'm not just leaving baghdad i'm fleeing baghdad. but the city gates the soldier who checks out passports tells us yet another attack

a scar to the capital. was. another checkpoint on the right of 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 of 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 the throne

the president of the iraqi republic saddam was saying in one thousand eight hundred 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. built his 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. to least be told language the truth will programs in documentaries in

arabic it's all here on all t.v. reporting from the world's hot spots the v.o.i.p. interviews intriguing stories for you yes he's been trying. to find out more visit our big dog all t.v. dog called.

the new cover international airport in the very heart of moscow. at the end of the road lies come the mecca of 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 but they are responsible for so many victims since baghdad fell. and i would stress that most of the attacks have targeted the shia community can walk us through one of the cia and. pilgrims are well protected here all the offices and soldiers a shia. several million faithful including many from iran come every year to visit the mosques and 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 than when 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 that shout i have it if i have it.

this is. the main prayer takes place in the hussein most. the in i'm sermons a political resonance and a broadcast throughout iraq and the shia world and. the shias today are imposing their numbers and their power. and. the prayers always end with cries to the glory of the prophet hussein the son of ali allegedly designated by mohammed to be his only successor you never heard them . but many on under saddam a million she has been detained and many of them were assassinated and thrown into a mass graves and it's not much of

a sentiment i myself your servant spent twelve years in iraqi jails about 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 yes we suffered and the prisons were filled with shias for me when i be. leaving kabbalah is like crossing a graveyard. everywhere all portraits of she amount has fallen for the glory of the prophet hussein mohammed there. was that. possible.

on the baghdad and basra 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 out perhaps this is the renowned desert hospitality. we had for a camp for the man who maintained 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 martin indyk iraqi army was hunger thirst and fatigue. a member of your family was taken hostage and she deserves it. you horrible new days when they called people who ran away they were simply hang on to. one of you and i spent seven years in the army and it was very tough. insana most days a soldier was paid two thousand tina less than the bank he was carrying was worth we can definitely say we were really miserable. the highway splits the desert and on each side of the road to bask in the vast oil fields of rumaylah and much known. more than half of the iraqi production is pumped from this burning desert

a treasure chest within the sound. shell b.p. exxon mobil and the chinese cineplex of already got their hands on the bulk of it. at last we reach bastrop where the euphrates and the tigris meet. travel is 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 and 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 as if we were no longer men that's the truth that's honestly what i feel for ya. we are less and less respected before an iraqi could walk by this 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. 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 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 in mind that 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 go behind that no minister has taken the trouble to come and see us to ask how we survived or ask us if we. need anything but we have nobody to talk to. and so since the americans left the poor and the powerless join the militia and the terrorist groups who at least provide money and protection. everywhere in the city our portraits of the she might outside his radical troops feed on poverty. the road ends at our file on the banks of the persian gulf the end of our journey.

from 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 taunt us a reminder that americans have gone leaving pandora's box wide open. been especially on me personally i never thought i know collaborated with the

americans. well john what chile where i work i am and always have been a taxi driving us. i still can't cross the country north to south from south dakota and follow all taxi i go wherever i can find work i 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 the manja 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.

i am am. i . ok. i. mean no way things are going to republican. better off than the state of.

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. live. cut. cut. cut. cut. if. the remaining suspect in monday's marathon attacks is captured alive after a fierce standoff with police in a boston suburb he and his brother who was killed in an earlier gunfight being

investigated for links with extremists in the north caucuses. meanwhile r.t. spoke exclusively to the mother of the two alleged bombers who says her children were constantly monitored by the f.b.i. and could never have carried out a terror attack. plus a nation at war against itself killings bombings and terror attacks set the scene for iraqi elections party reports from the heart of the unrest well al qaida flags fly over the bastion of insurrection which even a decade long u.s. occupation failed to temper. and burning rubber in bahrain ahead of the formula one grand prix antigovernment protesters clashed with police trying to draw attention to the human rights abuses in the kingdom.