Beyond Baghdad (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] this ethnic fault line is really going to start to erupt a desperate and divided country the americans were to pull out everybody would be fighting everybody else would be sunni against the shiite muslims against the christians that's going to be a catastrophe tonight frontline correspondent martin smith crosses iraq the people have survived saddam he finds but can they survive themselves [Music] [Music] last summer the top u.s administrator in baghdad told me that the press was doing a lousy job of covering the story here he said we needed to get out of baghdad now it's mid-november and we've come back to see how the u.s plan to turn this country into a showcase for democracy in the middle east is fairing today i'm in the northern city of mosul with general david petraeus he's having the kind of success here that washington had hoped for this was our first stop on a five-week trip across iraq foreign [Music] we're attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new free trade [Music] all zone guests in the new free zone area getting business rolling in the midst of constant security threats is no easy matter but with a combination of money well spent tough military tactics and what petraeus will admit is some luck the general has made steady progress we've come here to get some sense of how much work there is still to do and how long soldiers like petraeus will need to be here [Applause] petraeus and around 18 000 soldiers moved into northwestern iraq in late april and set up headquarters in mosul an ancient city on the western edge of kurdistan [Music] petraeus told me the landscape here reminds him of kansas under names like task force johnny appleseed tom sawyer easy rider and marcus welby petraeus has launched 4 500 reconstruction projects making mosul a showcase for visiting congressmen [Music] even before ambassador paul bremer set up shop in baghdad petraeus held iraq's first post-war election i followed petraeus to one city council meeting [Music] they were discussing what right the newly trained iraqi police had to search mosques for weapons if the mosques do not want somebody to go into them then they should not store mortar base plates mortar aiming circles and mortar firing triggers in their mosques and for what it's worth we will certainly discuss this with the iraq civil defense this council has met over 50 times and approved thousands of projects the plan is that by june iraqis will run it by themselves in in the past two weeks alone over 670 rpg rounds and 333 rpg launchers were turned over to us by local citizens meanwhile security remains the biggest concern we drove out to the 101st ammo dump so they're bringing us out to a base here where they're collecting all this ammunition that every day they get several truckloads of rockets sams grenades explosive material and they bring it in here to this old base iraqi base and then they blow it up in fact there is so much ammunition that it is piling up faster than the 101st can dispose of it now some of the ieds the improvised explosive devices are made out of these very things right right so you find these things being put into a road and and attempts to kill you guys roger the problem for petraeus now is that his very success has made him and the 101st an attractive target about a month or so ago we saw a sustained spike of enemy activity we've lost a number of soldiers during that time had a number of others wounded if the enemy sees this as an example of success then of course they're going to want to take it on and they are at the end of our first day petraeus joined his general staff for his nightly briefing we're trying to gain entry through a non-border crossing location sir it was a powerpoint extravaganza hundreds of reconstruction projects were reviewed okay next slide 101st i thought runs a very tight ship you betcha okay next slide but then came the day's bad news two helicopters from the 101st airborne division were flying over a suburban area of mosul shortly after nightfall and the crash happened eyewitness accounts speak of some kind of missile striking one of the blackhawks which then collided with the second two blackhawks down and the worst single loss of life for the american military since the start of the war seventeen soldiers were dead a visit of u.s congressman scheduled for the following day was canceled [Music] until recently mosul had not seen much violence compared to baghdad and it is still not experienced much in the way of ethnic tension though the city contains a volatile mix of kurds arabs and assyrians we've hired a driver kais a sunni arab from baghdad he's a young entrepreneur who's banking on peace and prosperity he's put all his life savings into a used bmw [Music] today he's helping us locate another entrepreneur a wealthy mosul businessman so we can talk to him about the future [Applause] thank you now this is a very old factory so his name is muhammad ali yunus and he runs this tannery next door to one of petraeus air bases his workers a mix of kurds arabs and turkmen all get on just fine he says as long as there are jobs with business picking up he tells me he'll be hiring more soon and eunice has other plans showed me through a new door in the back of his factory this is center we're making exclusive for our neighbors here now this is he has invested 40 000 of his own money to build a combo restaurant laundry internet cafe and leather shop he's counting on the soldiers next door to be among his primary customers you like it yeah very much you know i i have a sense i have a feeling that this is going to be something like a new iraq and that what you have seen back there is the old iraq so you're investing a lot here yes we're very optimistic for the future but only if the americans stay oh definitely if the americans leave now it's a disaster here we have the elements of a civil war of a terrible civil war so kurds versus arabs shiites versus sunni muslims versus christians turks turkmenis versus kurds and you name it we've got it we're talking chaos [Music] general petraeus told us that if we wanted to understand ethnic tensions in iraq we should drive to kirkuk [Music] traditionally a city of kurds and turkmen on the southwestern edge of kurdistan kirkuk felt prey to saddam's brutal arabization program in the 1980s today the city is claimed equally by arabs turkmen and kurds the job of sorting out those claims has fallen largely to the u.s army we linked up with the 173rd airborne brigade commanded by colonel bill mayville this is a place that could unravel iraq this is a place that could begin a spiral a downward spiral civil unrest is right here it's at the surface several times in the last few months kurds and arabs have clashed in the streets in august turkmen also rioted turkmen and arabs both fear that their city is being sold out from underneath them to the kurds how well does washington or even baghdad understand what you're facing here at cook cook first off let me say no one can no one can possibly hope to appreciate the complexity of kirkuk until you've been here and you've spent as much time as we have had the privilege of spending here my concern at this point is that one community sees itself being outmaneuvered by the other takes steps to make sure it's not out maneuver and then we create this this momentum that consumes the city at a rate and a pace that upsets the other community [Music] [Applause] while we were in kirkuk we ran into a demonstration of shia arabs these people were angry about the makeup of the city council and the kirkuk police force both were dominated by kurds we followed the demonstration to this mosque and spoke to the chief imam abdul fattah al-musawi [Music] has signed a petition demanding the city council be dissolved and seats reapportioned to reflect the fact that arabs now make up a large proportion of the city they live mostly in housing projects on the south side of town the kurds call them ten thousand dinar arabs a reference to the incentive money they received from saddam to relocate from the south most of them have been here for more than a decade [Music] what's your opinion about the fact that the kurds some of them believe that this should be a courtesy and that you many of you should go back to the south of iraq hey [Music] under saddam's arabization policy close to a million kurds were forced out of their homes now they've been coming back to cities like kirkuk and settling in refugee camps on the outskirts of town but you live here in tents in what is essentially a refugee camp the kurds believe that the war really was about their repatriation to lands that they had lost during the arabization processes saying they believed that we will underwrite their return to this province we followed mayville to a meeting with kurdish leadership if they want to leave fine but if but if we're not you know if if what we're doing is forcing them to leave don't we look a lot like the regime we just overthrow oh arab if you don't recognize that the shia the kurds turkmen and the arabs are all victims then you are going to be fighting one fight after another your children will be fighting and you will see the same cycle of fighting that this land has always known because you are going down a road you're going down a road with this ultimatum that will be your undoing i am really worried about what happens here and to be fair to the communities that are here i don't think they have the capacity to solve this problem themselves they do need outside help we don't even have the rules of law yet to arbitrate mediate or even discuss compensation packages and we don't we just what we have is is historical forces at play here this month colonel mayville and his unit will rotate out of iraq the work he started here will fall to another coalition commander that night our hotel in kirkuk was attacked somebody apparently drove by and threw a grenade right in front of our hotel we were just upstairs three members of the hotel staff were wounded by glass and shrapnel the staff assumed it was bath loyalists targeting a hotel that catered to westerners [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] when police arrived hotel security accused them of failing to adequately patrol the neighborhood the police tried to prevent us from filming then a fight broke out when we kept filming one policeman fired three rounds at the windows directly above our heads to push us back [Music] the other part of colonel mayville's job is running military operations against the resistance on this night mayville had received intelligence that a baathist cell was operating from a town 40 miles south of kirkuk it is an area where there are constant attacks against the coalition forces water rounds ieds the improvised explosive devices that hit our vehicles what we're doing is coming in with a large force to let everybody know one to the bad guys we're going to find you because we're going to get a bunch of them tonight and i think that you're going to see this kind of an operation going on throughout iraq back and forth until finally everyone gets to realize that there's a new new order in place we arrived in the town hawija at dawn downtown we saw many posters of saddam and a partially restored mural background hell yeah that's what i'm talking about one thousand soldiers spread out across town with instructions to move cautiously tangled charlie papa [Applause] colonel mayville said the objective was to capture enemies not create them a tip brought them to this house where they found eight tubes of c4 explosives dozens of blasting caps battery and a switch that's all you need several ak-47s and a banner proclaiming loyalty to saddam it says all the people are with you and we will defend you with everything we've got we are ready to defend the great iraq the homeowners said the explosives guns and banner belong to their son this is getting extremely serious because he's harvard terrorists he's but they wouldn't talk until soldiers brought in a bulldozer and began to destroy the house [Music] the mother then said her son was plowing a nearby field he was arrested that day along with 25 other men a really good job on on your part your soldiers park and in terms of precision i'm realistic about success i think we americans want very much to earn the respect uh to earn a partnership here and a friendship i think there's enough of an idealist in me that i would hope that we could do something like that [Music] after kirkuk we push south deeper into the sunni arab lands of central iraq [Music] the roads between here and baghdad are notoriously unsafe a civilian contractor had disappeared on this stretch a few weeks earlier kais told us there would be no stopping for filming ambushes are commonplace this is the so-called sunni triangle sunni arabs have long dominated iraqi politics but now they have been stripped of their power and being only one-fifth of the overall population of iraq they worry about how they will fare in a democracy nowhere more than in tikrit birthplace of saddam this is not a place that welcomes outsiders even filming is difficult we've been warned to watch our backs at a downtown restaurant where i had lunch saddam's picture hung on the wall and that very day two coalition contractors were murdered a few blocks away nearby is saddam's water palace we've come to ask the commander of the 4th infantry division now headquartered here about the prospect of winning the loyalty of the people in the sunni triangle some of the problem is they expect the united states to come in they would throw billions of dollars and in six months this country would be like germany is today that's an unrealistic expectation we had come here at a critical time it has not been widely reported but in october reconstruction money so important to winning hearts and minds dried up we were just beginning to see people reacting to the successes we were having with the water treatment projects with the school projects with the sewage projects with the police buildings and the courthouses being developed we were really starting to see some positive response to all of that you had momentum we had momentum and so we've somewhat lost that a little bit we can regain it but it's frustrating why did nobody see that coming uh we didn't see it coming i can't tell you why it happened i i don't know uh so we just gotta it's done that's water under the bridge we're gonna move forward and i think that's my comment on that [Music] it appeared to have serious consequences as reconstruction slowed anti-coalition violence increased [Music] november the month we were in iraq turned out to be the most deadly since the war was declared over in may this is bakuba 75 miles south of tikrit another hard hit town i went to talk to the local u.s commander hi there hello hi hi smith how are you hi lieutenant susan grieg says she ran out of money while trying to set up a police force what happened was initially when we arrived here i mean we used coalition money and then you know at some point you know that ran down and honestly for a few months i mean we we were really to stand still i couldn't get weapons i couldn't get uniforms patrol cars i have a couple police stations that only had one patrol car to make matters worse bakuba is among the most dangerous police posts in all of iraq two days before we got here suicide bombers struck two local police stations eleven policemen and five civilians were killed many more were injured we talked to one of the victims at his home and then foreign he may return but many others haven't immediately after the bombing around 40 police officers in bakuba province resigned greig told us that in early december she'd been assured that money was on its way but she says she lost valuable time we cannot really work on public works if we don't have the security to protect the workers that are there we can ask all the contractors in the world to come out and build a sewage line and everything else but you know what someone can come right behind him throw a couple rpgs at it and what do you have we need the security first in order to allow these civilian contractors to get out to do their job it's a stubborn problem the more active the resistance the slower the reconstruction there are security problems throughout the sunni triangle the worst are in fallujah less than an hour west of baghdad it is the epicenter of the resistance on the way there we saw two u.s army supply trucks that had just been attacked as we entered the town there was anti-american graffiti everywhere [Applause] more than 40 american gis have been killed in this area since april america is well throughout central iraq it's easy to find people that complain on the streets but the people of fallujah were especially blunt foreign even the mayor who says he is pro-american is critical foreign there's been tension in fallujah since the end of the war on several occasions american troops have mistakenly shot and killed civilians and iraqi policemen the people have not forgotten and soldiers remained tense just a few days before we got here a warehouse had been raided by soldiers looking for explosives the doors open and they smashed as i was listening to the guard i heard gunshots [Applause] it was a wedding party we asked to go inside the warehouse and talk with the owners of tribe one of the largest and most powerful in the country when we asked the americans about the raid they admitted that they might have overreacted and are investigating the incident we spoke to the local u.s army commander lieutenant colonel brian drinkwine sheikh ghazi is rumored to be one of the third or fourth uh richest sheiks in iraq he's a man of great political influence but you were suspicious of qazi no i would not say uh we're suspicious of anyone sheik uh in particular one of your captains says uh i don't like him because uh he wants to kill me well we've had a few threats from different people i don't think that uh you know sheikh ghazi is in a position that he can be a future leader of this city in iraq it should not only be the coalition and cpa providing resources to fallujah there are iraqis with money that can do great good for this city but he wants the u.s coalition forces out you know some shakes will say that but to a man they will tell you if we did leave and pick up and stack arms and go tomorrow there will be tribal war with more bloodshed than this place has ever seen you have to develop a representative government that can stand on its own how long is it going to take i i don't want to put a time table to it i think it's the conditions that you look for when are iraqis on the streets of fallujah you're going to tell me that things are better hopefully tomorrow i'll tell you it's a little better the people that i've spoken to on the streets they they like to gesture up and down the main boulevard there and say look where do you see any improvements where is it they don't they don't see it and frankly it's not it doesn't jump out at you when you drive through fallujah that there's a lot of reconstruction going on it's it will take time we were interrupted a helicopter had been shot down they said they took small arms fire and these there's two guys maneuvering on them now so okay let me uh let me stop that it's it's an incident with another unit in our zone so if you give me a minute we could stop rolling i'll be right back of course i understand of the ten american helicopters shot down over iraq four came down near fallujah this time the americans were lucky there were no serious injuries before we headed south kais told me we needed to fill our gas tank everywhere we went there were lines many of them went on and on and on [Music] there was a shortage of gasoline in iraq due to decayed pipelines and frequent attacks on oil industry infrastructure [Music] the people on this line have been here for much of the night and all morning maybe somewhere down the road we've been told that on average the wait is about six hours our trip would have been impossible if we hadn't found an alternative source on the black market [Music] this enterprising seller buys it from the gas station and sells it to us at six times the market price in a country where unemployment ranges as high as 70 percent few iraqis can afford the markup on a full tank we resumed our trip south we would have met with u.s military commanders in the south but there are none instead italians poles british troops and others patrol here [Music] the south is home to the shia traditionally the poorest most oppressed and marginalized of iraq's people today the shia are experiencing a revival [Music] [Applause] shia pilgrims from iran and elsewhere long prevented from coming here by saddam are flooding in to the sacred cities of najaf karbala and kufa [Music] commerce is booming and contributions to the local mosques are filling their coffers making the clerics who control them rich and powerful the shia also know that they have a lot to gain in a democracy by some counts they represent sixty percent of iraq's population [Music] the preeminent shia leader in iraq whose followers number in the millions is the grand ayatollah ali hussaini [Music] has challenged ambassador bremer's complex formula for the selection of a national assembly calling instead for direct popular elections we tried to talk to him on an earlier trip to najaf in august who can we ask who's his secretary is this where sistani his spokesman refused to appear on camera we hope to be able to speak with ayatollah foreign another of iraq's five living grand ayatollahs mohammed al-muresi is much more approachable like sistani he is considered a moderate but he warns if the americans don't yield to sistani's demands for direct elections they risk disaster [Music] meeting with a group of pilgrims from eastern iraq the ayatollah insists on their moving closer [Applause] he counsels patience who [Applause] the man moderate shia leaders fear most is muktada al-sadr he derives his power from the prominence of his late father a much revered grand ayatollah [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the most fervent of sodder's flock where a green banner that reads god's army they are the activist paramilitary wing of his religious movement they have stormed mosques thrown out moderate clerics and reportedly threatened the lives of sistani and other moderate ayatollahs u.s military intelligence believes they have also organized violence against occupation forces the army's size is unknown but it is active across the country another member is the young imam we met in kirkuk abdul musawi we ran into him in najaf after he had come from a meeting with soder you you use military language many iraqis are wary of sauder and his followers adnan pachichi is a secular sunni member of the u.s appointed governing council in baghdad is it a concern of yours that a person like mukhtar al-sadr can stir up trouble for iraq he is uh have you met him by the john no i've been to his friday prayers i hope to meet him well from what i hear you know he he's rather unpredictable shall i say he's young he is what constituency does muktar sader represent well if eliminated is also a member of the governing council but as the political face of iraqi shia he refuses to admit any differences with sauder i ask again what does muktar sauder represent who are his followers [Music] i spoke with abdulaziz about slaughter and he was reluctant to even mention his name yes they they they don't want to recognize him no they dislike him he's challenging the the established authority [Music] [Applause] [Music] for now sauter is not openly advocating a break with sistani he too wants direct elections if democracy is coming to iraq the shia must get their due [Applause] democrats in america distrust of americans runs deep in the south in 1991 after the first gulf war when shia rose against saddam they were at first encouraged by the u.s but then abandoned thousands were slaughtered by saddam and buried in mass graves today we've been invited to a memorial service in the town of shatra for fallen shia martyrs a veteran of the 91 revolt tells me their fight against the baathists is not over there have been some killings of bathus in the area recently in the south near basra kulmakan inside we attend the memorial service for martyrs of the 15th of shabon movement a militant shia islamist group its leader hamza al-musawy complains that decades-old sacrifices are not being recognized by the americans says he doesn't support violence but there are reports that his own 15th of shaban movement has been involved in vigilante justice terrorizing sunnis forcing them off their lands [Music] our journey had brought us far south to the marshlands here the great rivers of iraq the tigris and euphrates merge [Music] this is the land of the marsh arabs some people believe that this was the biblical garden of eden [Music] for centuries the marshes were impenetrable beyond the control of outsiders [Music] during the 1980s they provided a hideout for deserters from the iran-iraq war and after the failed 91 uprising shia rebel groups used the area to organize fresh attacks on the regime saddam retaliated by draining the marshes forcing up to 200 000 shia to flee many to iran others north to towns like krokok ninety percent of the marshes are now destroyed we saw abandoned villages and where there was once water desert camel trains now cross the dry land from kuwait and saudi arabia i traveled with 15th of siobhan rebels who took me to an old hideout [Music] in a nearby village they introduced us to the tribesmen who helped protect them [Music] the chief of the tribe hussein al-jabiri was himself jailed and tortured by saddam all these men have scores to settle [Music] [Music] it will be a long time before the killing stops before the cycles of revenge wind down there is too much history here traveling across the country for the past five weeks we've been shattered by that history many powers have confronted it ottoman turks british colonialists hashemite kings saddam hussein and now the americans on our last day as we headed south through nazarea we ran across history's path again saddam had just been captured [Applause] [Applause] this was all just uh spontaneously broke out right after the governing council made the uh official confirmation saddam was taken into crete alive today [Applause] a year ago this was the prize the reason we came here the just ending [Applause] now it seems like only another stop on the road a long road [Applause] [Music] that afternoon we drove out of iraq [Music] next time on frontline the client i trusted one of the largest accounting firms in the world the pitch they told me this was a bulletproof deal the firm the penalties hailed in comparison to the revenues that would be generated by this tax shelter the payoff they can create these products for thousands of dollars and sell them for millions the problem corporations saved billions in taxes and the rest of us are picking up the tab for tax me if you can next time on frontline to order front lines beyond baghdad on video cassette or dvd call pbs home video at 1 800 play pbs [Music] support for frontline is provided by u.s news and world report trust for over 70 years a commitment to playing it straight getting it right u.s news and world report trust matters frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you thank you [Music] you

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

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Id: u2ne_MNa3vk

Length: 54min 45sec (3285 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021