IRAQ
THROUGH IRAQIS' EYES
by Jeff Jacoby - Boston Globe
A year after Saddam Hussein was captured, how
goes the liberation of Iraq?
If a phrase like "the liberation of Iraq" strikes you as ironic,
chances are most of what you know about the situation there comes from
the mainstream press. After all, a tidal wave of journalism has
been portraying Iraq as a chaotic mess more or less from the moment US
troops entered the country. Story after story dwells on the
inadequacy of the postwar planning and the drumbeat of bad news is
inescapable: looting, insurgency, terrorists, kidnappings. And,
always, the grimly mounting toll of Iraqi and US casualties. This
is liberation?
Yes, it is.
But liberations are often dangerous and turbulent, less
clear-cut while they are happening than they later become in
retrospect. There was chaos during the US occupation of Germany
after World War II, and journalists were certain then too that military
victory was being squandered through postwar blunders. In 1946,
leading publications concentrated bad news in articles with headlines
like "How We Botched the German Occupation" (Saturday Evening Post),
"US seen 'fumbling' its job in Germany" (New York Times), and
"Americans Are Losing the Victory in Europe" (Life).
But how would Iraq appear if it came to us not through the reporting of
Western journalists, but through the candid testimony of the Iraqis
themselves? American reporters accustomed to freedom and
the rule of law experience Iraq today as a place of danger and
violence. Iraqis who lived under Saddam were accustomed to
tyranny, cruelty, and secret police. What do *they* make of their country
today?
Last spring, three enterprising Americans -- filmmakers Eric Manes and
Martin Kunert, both former producers for MTV, and Gulf War veteran
Archie Drury, a former Marine -- decided to find out. They
distributed 150 digital video recorders to ordinary Iraqis and asked
them to film anyone or anything they thought important --
and then pass
the cameras on to someone else.
From April to September, the cameras circulated from hand to hand
through every region of the country. What eventually came
back to the three Americans was 450 hours of raw video recorded by more
than 2,000 Iraqis from all walks of life -- and not one frame of it
influenced by an outside director or crew. Edited down to a
taut 80 minutes, the result -- "Voices
of Iraq" -- is a gripping documentary that for the first
time shows Iraq as even the most skillful American journalist will
never be able to show it: through
the eyes and ears of Iraq's people.
"Voices of Iraq" is by turns heartbreaking, exhilarating, and
inspiring. The war and its destruction is never far from
the surface. One of the opening scenes is of a car bombing
in Sadr City, and when a little girl is asked by her off-camera
interviewer, "What do you want to tell the world about Iraq?" she
answers poignantly: "These explosions are hurting everyone."
A mother weeps for her son, killed in the crossfire during
a fight between US soldiers and looters. There is even
footage -- supplied, Drury told NPR, by a sheik from Fallujah -- of
insurgents preparing a bomb.
But bad as the war is, the horror it ended -- Saddam
Hussein's 24-year
reign -- was worse.
In the film, a young Kurdish mother tells her daughter, who is wielding
the camcorder, how she would burn herself with cigarettes to prepare
for the torture she knew was coming. A policeman recalls
what it was like to arrest a member of the Ba'ath Party.
"You'd be scared," he says. "You'd shake with
fear." One man explains that Saddam's son Uday "used to
come often to Ravad Street -- every Thursday for the market -- to
choose a girl to rape." A few brief clips are shown from a
captured Fedayeen Saddam videotape: A blindfolded man thrown to his
death from a rooftop, a man's hand getting severed, someone's tongue
being cut out.
It isn't hard to understand the emotions of the man who answers, when
asked how he reacted to the news of Saddam's capture, "I danced like
this! I kept dancing. Then I cried."
Yet for all they have been
through, Iraqis come across as incredibly optimistic, hopeful,
and
enthusiastic. Above all, perhaps, *normal.*
In "Voices of Iraq" they film themselves flying on rides in
an amusement park, dancing the night away at a graduation party, taking
their kids to a playground, shopping for cell phones. A
police officer mugs for the camera. Shoppers throng the
streets of Suleimaniyah. A scrawny kid pumps iron with a
makeshift barbell -- and makes a request of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
("I like your movies. You're a good
actor. Can you please send me some real weights?")
Iraqis haven't had much experience with democracy, but we see the
delight they take in the new opportunities Saddam's defeat is making
possible. Two women celebrate the freedom to get a
passport. An artist talks proudly about work for which he
went to prison. A young woman says her dream is to be a
lawyer. And one rough-looking fellow says simply, "I wish
for a government elected by the Iraqi people."
Yes, it's a liberation. And the men and women we liberated,
it turns out, are people just like us. The headlines dwell
on the bad news, and the bad news is certainly real. But
things are looking up in Iraq, as the Iraqis themselves will be happy
to tell you. All someone had to do was ask.
©2004 Boston Globe
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