absolute symbol of power a statue of saddam hussein. on april ninth two thousand and three it was torn to the ground of the united states believed to have won the 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 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 gave me to. what folly the combat continues. and it's through theater that he hopes to win it is methodist to re-invest the public with a sense of resistance and a taste for life. i know that out. 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 they're not completely lost. not. more fun to be doing your shoulder but more than that. in baghdad no one knows who the enemy is anymore sunni's shias islamists christians each with their armies and militia each fighting the other. nine out of us i know some of your guys who joined al qaeda just to get some money. so out of the hard. of several al qaeda gives them money whereas the government abandons them farther than. there were flaws. but that paid to kill here on that floor.

about michelle obama so they've ruined their futures that lives and their families find out all the while home. 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 the sensuous civilian.

syriac khaldiyeh an orthodox and armenian churches have become choice targets. al qaeda assassins and sunni and shia fanatics agree on nothing except only fixing the christians they accuse of being western crusaders. baghdad is a raising its a lustrous 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 is the sunnis. and. i live in. a sunny district.

in two thousand and six it was all. 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 out i'm out of you know that i deserve a new the battles raged for seventy two hours you know. al-qaeda the army the militia everyone was fighting. i banned and 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 apathetic about. living in baghdad ming surviving attacks but it's also an every day 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 town 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. sadness 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. having. been. a school teacher. she's invited us to.

come. out of the 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 when i was 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 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

lets you down i want. to. come up with a sort of one of my wife is different but as we have guests i can drink we may be poor but we still have a sense of hospitality. abdu is our a sunni and a shia from the rest couple today war and religion have also imposed boundaries on love. as the lights go out once again the neighborhoods back up generators take over i have your message that you. that is not one thing that we were hearing. on shia my husband a sunni must have had now after the war the two religions can't intermarriage anymore and 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 of sydney

it's shameful treating people this way in iraq with all muslims there was. so what a muslim man asks for the hand of a muslim woman according to islamic tradition life and that's all but i think how it was at the end of the war that this division appears shia sunni. but i guess now we've come to threats was headed how does a sunni down area shiite is that we're seeing as we look at this 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 youngish 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 our 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 to shia 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 sound 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 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. palace in the heart of the legendary city. his tower of babel crashed down around him and the dust of pride and ambition. his memory has been left to the ravages of time and the insults of his survivors. we are facing a lot of problem. because no one no good schools.

no developments when you are. in all the needs you want to community l.n.g. most mortgages. don't do you good. give dunford for my property just i was fight back i was fights. i'll fight. fight right. mission free accreditation free transport charges free. range and free risk free. to tide free.

download free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media and on to r.t. dot com in. the book about 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 on the 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 came up just in one of the ship. 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 get more 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. of it. this is. the main prayer takes place in the same most. the him 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 that there was. a menu on under

saddam a million shias were detained and many of them were assassinated then thrown into mass graves and center 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 yes we suffered and the prisons were filled with shias only when the f.b.i. . leaving kabbalah is like crossing a graveyard. everywhere all portraits of shia mountains fall in for the glory of the prophet hussein mohammed their. little. thing as.

possible. on the baghdad bass run 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 sams to help us out perhaps this is the renowned a desert hospitality. we had for a camp for the men who maintained the highway once they were all soldiers and saddam's army. when the americans came many deserted.

without knowing who we are to make room for us to share that. without of massive take iraqi army was hunger thirst and fatigue. remember your family was taken hostage or she deserves it. you horrible in the 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. insanities days a soldier was paid two thousand dinos 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. more than

half of iraqi production is pumped from this burning desert a treasure chest within the sound. shale b.p. exxon mobil and the chinese sing a pack of already got their hands on the bulk of it. at last we reach bass from the euphrates and the tigris meet. travellers once called the city of venice of the south. who comes to kill us and destroy our country and good 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 is 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 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. 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 its 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 my pocket 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. i have no minister has taken the trouble to come and see us to ask how we survive or ask us if we. need and i think 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 are portraits of the shia. on saddam his radical troops feed on poverty.

the road ends i'll file on the banks of the push and gulf the end of our journey. this is the outback hoyle 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 i know collaborated with the americans. which i would show where i work i am and always have been a taxi driving us. i cross the country no. to south gen from south dakota and follow up taxi i go wherever i can find work and 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 and 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 the hoa they'll be ill so the manja kook muscle to create for. baghdad babilonia karbala 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.

victims multiply here each day and. it's very profitable to invest in colombia.

is a very high return on investment. you'll know me and he said that i've been working in this area for thirty years and i've always had to pay the armed groups a lot of needed betis i knew that i had a managers who changed their name and strategy but i just feel the same murderous. high ranking suspects give no comment pretty upset about that mr president. to president putin. but to me. i won't give an interview i'm sorry but no. investigation is a dead. end he says stick a stop to it and keep quiet or else you'll suffer the consequences. even us and your body guards to watch themselves because the same goes for them. blood returns

from. i've never heard of such a case as ours were so much money and gold has stood for so many. for all the gold in colombia. and.

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with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. international in the very heart of moscow. that has emerged that rochelle warned of the united states that one of the boston bombing suspects was a follower of radical islam but the f.b.i. failed to find any signs of domestic or foreign terrorist activity that's as the

second suspect is treated for severe injuries in hospital. iraqis are voting their first election since the u.s. military withdrawal but hopes for democracy are marred by bombings and protests are to report from the heart of the other. end of tens of thousands in a bahrain venting their fury over the upcoming formula one grand prix seen as giving legitimacy to a regime that is continuing its crackdown on anti-government protests. and live from our studios in moscow this is r.t. i'm sean thomas glad to have you with us. now u.s. law enforcement officials say russia warned the f.b.i. of two years ago that one of the boston bombing suspects was a follower of radical islam.