Once Upon a Time in Iraq

On 2011, I was sitting with my friends. Suddenly, a guy came.

He was wearing a big coat, and it was huge.

I will never forget the fear in his eyes,

and he started to yell "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!"

And he exploded.

And he killed 12 that day, seven of them my friends.

He was 17. His father and brother was killed by the American troops.

And he was seeking revenge.

For nearly nine years, our nation has been at war in Iraq.

The troops are now preparing to make their final march

across the border and out of the country.

Iraq's future will be in the hands of its own people.

Our war there will be over.

At the end of 2011,

all the coalition forces finally left Iraq.

It just touches my heart to see our troops coming home.

HORN HONKING God bless us!

The huge surge of thousands of extra American troops had helped

defeat Al-Qaeda in Iraq and end the civil war.

Now, the country was being run by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

DISTANT GUNFIRE

When the Americans say that, "We did something good in Iraq,"

I want them to look into my eyes and tell me this.

They didn't bring freedom. They brought chaos.

Allahu akbar!

My friend! How are you?

How's your day? Not too bad, can't complain, yeah.

Another day in paradise.

Yeah!

Waleed is one of over 2 million people forced to leave Iraq

since war began in 2003.

He came to Canada when he was 21 years old after receiving

death threats for working with foreign journalists.

They do say, and it's true, "Home is where your heart is."

And my heart is in Baghdad and forever will be.

Plus, it's fucking cold here! HE LAUGHS

I arrived to Canada.

I met this beautiful, loving fricking woman.

I married.

Got educated here.

I studied film and media.

My name is Waleed Moudhafar.

Sorry.

I was really an intense individual at that time. Go.

My name is Waleed Moudhafar.

I left my country eight years ago.

And now, I want to return.

I couldn't return home until 2012,

cos that's when I finally got my permanent residency.

I spoke to my wife and I was like, "I can't take it any more.

"I got to go home."

And I knew that my brothers were waiting for me.

LAUGHTER

HORN HONKS, MUSIC BLARES

I don't even know what I'm going to do when I see my mother.

SHE ULULATES

I mean, not to see your mum for nine years...

It was an insanely happy moment.

MUSIC PLAYS

And it just hit me.

I left my brothers, they were kids.

The youngest was nine years old.

I put him to bed.

And I was thinking, like, it's almost like I was in a dream and

I just woke up and you're expecting that not two minutes have gone by.

I wanted to do a high school friend reunion.

Some of them, you know, started coming up with excuses

and excuses, and there was this friend of mine called Hakem.

He finally will was like "No, no.

"If you want to hang out, just come here. We'll hang out, you and I."

And I was like, "But why? Our friends?"

And he was, like, "Because you fucking invited al-Samiri."

"Yeah!"

And I was like, "Do you not remember?"

We freaking snuck out of school together.

It was, like, we did all of these... Of course I invited him!

And the guy was like, "Oh, you're one of those.

"He is Sunni."

And I was like, "Hold on.

"Do you mean to tell me that you don't speak to him

"because he's Sunni?"

And he was like, "Yeah."

And he was like, "And let me tell you something, Waleed.

"The Iraqi you left is no more.

"This is the new Iraq."

SHOUTING IN ARABIC ON LOUD-HAILER

In the two years since American troops withdrew,

sectarian tensions that had driven the civil war resurfaced.

All over Iraq, Sunni Muslims were protesting

against the Shia-led government.

Allahu akbar!

THEY SING

Sunni anger was being fuelled

by Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Maliki is a Shi'ite sectarian to the end, to his core.

He couldn't look at a Sunni Iraqi without seeing a terrorist,

and he treated them like that.

And on top of that, he just turns out to be just spectacularly

breathtakingly corrupt.

And the Americans, in their blindness,

kept him in power forever and ever,

and they could've gotten rid of him, they could've pushed him out.

Dexter Filkins had been reporting on Iraq for over a decade.

Maliki was really aggressively alienating

the Sunni population in Iraq.

Mass arrests, no trials, thousands of men held,

families don't know where they are.

They're basically just thrown in a dungeon somewhere,

and that was happening just on a huge scale - everywhere.

Treating them in a way that was kind of guaranteed to stir

a kind of resentment and ultimately violence.

You could feel it, you could feel the anger.

I have to leave again.

And I know something bad is going to happen.

And I was sobbing like a kid.

SHE SOBS

Cos I didn't know whether I'll see them again or not.

And saying goodbye to my brothers, like, I...

THEY CRY

Shit could hit the fan at any second.

ANY second in Iraq.

Yeah.

Something was a-brewing.

And that thing...

..fucked us for good now.

SIRENS BLARING

HORNS HONKING

MAN SPEAKING ON LOUD-HAILER

CROWD CHEERS

We drove through the city.

The Army that used to insult the people on a daily basis

in the checkpoints have disappeared.

They collapsed.

We thought the security forces would come back, fight back,

the terrorists would leave.

But then when I saw the weapons, the new cars,

they were almost all in one uniform.

I became totally sure that Isis is here to stay.

RAPID GUNFIRE

Can you just explain why people are cheering?

They weren't welcoming Isis.

But after years of oppression from corrupted troops

and governments,

people felt free for the first time.

In their life.

This is what Isis was selling to people.

That Maliki and his government is gone.

Soon after the so-called Islamic State took Mosul,

Omar lost his job as a professor of history at the university.

When Isis came to Mosul, part of the change

they wanted to do in the city is to change the education.

And simply they summarised all of this by saying that,

"Any education system that is not serving the word of Allah

"and preparing a fighter is unaccepted education.

"We need good Muslim fighters."

So, they forced all the teachers to rewrite the schoolbooks.

What we used to see as the police now is the Islamic police.

What used to be Iraqi flag now is the black flag of Isis.

From day one, you would see in the street

what they call the media outlet.

Putting on the TV, on the monitor, Isis videos.

Showing their propaganda.

Each mosque had one media point,

very big screens like those used in public squares to watch football.

VIDEO PLAYING

MUSIC PLAYS

I saw, myself, children between 12 to 15 years old

joining Isis just after watching a video.

Beyond this checkpoint and the first Isis checkpoint on the eastern

edge of Mosul, there's perhaps 1,000 yards of no man's land.

This was as close as we dare go.

We could just make out the jihadist's black-and-white flag.

I went to the Kurdish part of Iraq right after Isis had rolled in.

And I looked into the Caliphate.

And, black flag, checkpoints.

I remember just thinking, like, "There it is." You know? Like,

for years, Al-Qaeda was this, like, shadow army.

They blow up a mosque, they blow up a market, and then they disappear.

And, like, these guys, like, they took the territory.

And it was like... It was the Islamic State, and you could see it,

and there it was - right in front of me, a big black flag.

Crazy.

How did you feel looking into the Caliphate?

HE CHUCKLES

HE EXHALES FORCEFULLY

Man...

Man, I don't know how I felt then.

I... Look, I was...

At that point, looking into the Caliphate, I was...

You know, once again, the Americans had, like, thrown it away. You know?

They'd thrown it away. I mean, I was there in 2003

when they took down Saddam - they threw it away, you know?

I was there in 2008 after the surge,

and the violence had gone to nothing.

It was done. Al-Qaeda was finished.

And what happens?

The Americans leave, and so Omar al-Baghdadi,

he's the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,

he dispatches like half a dozen guys to Syria.

Like, go to Syria and form essentially what becomes Isis.