The terrible human tragedies that resulted from the toppling of Saddam
Once Upon a Time in Iraq BBC2, 9pm
★★★★★
HINDSIGHT can be a wonderful thing. Especially when a team of documentary makers as intelligent as this is able to put together fascinating archive footage with new material, to tell the tragic human story of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath in an original and compelling way. Director James Bluemel was inspired to make the five-part series after visiting Iraq in 2016, where he had gone to document the refugee crisis, a project that resulted in the BBC2 series, Exodus.
He realised that the human stories he was hearing were the result, directly or indirectly, of the US decision to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, a decision that changed the world forever.
The archive material — from boxes of unseen tapes stored in a barn in Wales — are brought vividly to life by recent interviews conducted with civilians, journalists and soldiers (not a politician in sight), who were in Iraq at the time and can look back and reflect on what it was like for them then, and what it means to them now.
In episode one, we see Waleed Naysif nervously lighting a cigarette as he describes his aspirations in 2003 when he was 18, as George Bush is shown on television announcing imminent US military action. “I was infatuated by the West. I wanted the blue jeans, I wanted the headphones… I learned English from movies and songs,” Waleed sighs.
For Ahmed Al Bashir, now a famous Iraqi comedian, it was all about trying to look like one of The Back Street Boys. “I was always asking myself why I wasn’t born in the Western world.” Um Qusay, a farmer’s wife who grew up in Al Alam, a village supposedly loyal to Saddam, describes how some people who tried to assassinate him were killed. As she speaks, we see shaky footage of a soldier leading a blindfolded man with bound wrists to sit on a rock, which is then detonated. “He used fear to oppress people”.
By contrast, Issam Al Rawi, sporting a ginormous handlebar moustache, and calling himself “one of the president’s advisors”, remembers trying to emulate the man he considered to have “charm and charisma that was a gift from God”. Cut to an interview with the extraordinary Sergeant Rudy Reays, who swigs from a bottle of tequila, as he flexes bulging tattooed biceps, and recounts what it was like in the elite reconnaissance marines.
“No sleep for three weeks, no armour ... just very capable, violent professionals,” he says, speaking as if in a trance.
And if you wanted to say “yes” to an order, he says, you had to shout ‘kill’ at the top of your voice.
The most poignant message of this balanced, empathetic documentary, which also comes out this week as a TV tie-in book, is how the dreams of so many ordinary Iraqis who dared to hope that toppling Saddam might result in them having better lives, were so quickly dashed, and how what came next was even worse.