- Title: Unreported World: Iraq's Next Battlefield
- Date: 28th May 2010
- Summary: As the US prepares to withdraw from Iraq, reporter Evan Williams and director Matt Haan travel to the most dangerous part of the country and find increasing religious, ethnic and political violence in this oil-rich region threatening to spill into bloody civil war once the troops leave. The Unreported World team begins its journey in Mosul, a city of two million people that lies on the fault line between the Arab and Kurdish parts of Iraq and has been a centre of resistance to the Americans since the invasion in 2003. Their route is lined with flattened buildings that have not been rebuilt since the invasion. Seven years on, it remains the most dangerous city in Iraq, with at least 50 murders occurring every month. In 2009 Iraqi forces took over responsibility for the security of the region, supposedly moving from a state of war to civil policing. But their main activity remains battling Sunni insurgents, who want the area to remain unstable as they battle what they see as the domination of Iraq by the Shia Muslim ruling majority. One local commander tells Williams that most of the killings are political rather than criminal. He claims Al Qaeda are trying to cause division between Kurds, Sunnis and Shia and are also targeting some of Mosul's oldest ethnic minorities - such as the Christians, Shabaks and Yezidis - to cause fear and chaos. The team asks American troops to take them to meet some of the minorities under attack, but they are told it is too dangerous. Instead, a group of Yezidi men, who have their own distinct 4,000-year religion and culture in this region, come to meet Williams and Haan. They say that they have been attacked and intimidated by both Kurdish separatists and Sunni Arabs. Out with another US patrol, the team travels 40 miles east of Mosul to Qaraqosh, a largely Christian town on the border with the Kurdish-controlled region. One local, Amar, tells Williams that Christians have taken up arms to defend themselves against attacks that have killed hundreds in the region. He says he is part of a militia called the Church Guardians that protects Christians from Arabs and Kurds. Williams and Haan decide to leave behind their military embed, and hear more from the people who will be left behind when US troops leave. A US helicopter drops them off in the Kurdish-controlled area 80 miles east of Mosul. Strict Kurdish security in this part of Iraq has seen violence fall, and many refugees have fled here from the fighting in and around Mosul. Returning to Qaraqosh, the team meets Rhazwan Al-Shamam, one of the very few independent journalists from Mosul still operating. He shows Williams pictures of a recent bomb attack on a church, which killed 32 people and injured many more, most of them Christians, but also some Muslims. He claims that the authorities 'never seem to find out who is behind the killings'. The team also meet a priest who fled to Qaraqosh following a brutal attack. Father Mazan Ishoo tells Williams that three Arab gunmen burst into his family home, opened fire and killed his father and two brothers. Throughout the team's time in Iraq, their American contacts have kept telling them that they've increased security and delivered a workable democracy. However, from what Unreported World has filmed in and around Mosul, the reality seems to be that people who have been living together for centuries are being driven apart and dangerous new sectarian divisions are emerging, which many believe could lead to full-blown and bloody civil war.
- Description:Critically acclaimed foreign affairs series offering an insight into the lives of people in some of the most neglected parts of the planet.
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:Quicksilver Films Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 6
- Transmission Date:28/05/2010
- Rights:UK and Eire
- Decade: 2010s