【星期日邮报】A nation in trauma - CNN's woman in Baghdad discovers ……

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A nation in trauma - CNN's woman in Baghdad discovers the real Iraq and sees grim portents for the future
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1189688/A-nation-trauma--CNNs-woman-Baghdad-discovers-real-Iraq-sees-grim-portents-future.html

By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 2:29 PM on 30th May 2009

Raed was a business graduate who might have helped Iraq move forward into its post-Saddam, post-coalition future.

Instead the 25-year-old was accused of being a U.S. agent by a local militia who cut off his hands, feet and head.

His father now hungers only for what he sees as justice - the execution of those who killed him.

Scroll to the end to see excerpts from the CNN documentary……


Give me justice: Iraqi Abu Wissam shows a picture of his murdered son Raed to CNN's Arwa Damon

Raed's story is just one that will be told in a startling, no-holds-barred documentary revealing the violent and volatile lives of ordinary people in Iraq as America debates how long to keep its forces there.

Veteran CNN reporter Arwa Damon interviews his family and others on all sides of the fracture lines running through Iraqi society after years of tyranny that have given way marketplace bombings, bloody assassinations and kidnappings.

In the documentary, Inside Iraq: Living With The Enemy, Raed's bitter and heartbroken father Abu Wissam says of his son's murderers: 'They were our neighbours, people who sold vegetables at the market, people we shared blocks of ice with in the heat of summer.'

Now he swears he won't rest until his son's killers are executed.


Vengeful: The wife of death squad victim speaks in the CNN documentary Inside Iraq: Living with the Enemy

The hatred afflicts men and women alike. One woman tells Ms Damon: 'If the Government doesn't do anything, we women [will]. And I am not a killer – but I will blow myself up in the midst of their families.'

As a CNN correspondent based in Baghdad, Ms Damon chronicled the atrocities committed by Shi'a militias, Sunni militants and Al Qaeda terrorists.

Now, venturing into the streets where the victims live, she asks whether those whose lives have been ripped asunder by the violence can return to 'normal life' – or if Iraq faces generations of social, political and religious dissension with daily bloodshed.

A former Sunni militant commander admits he arrested several Shi'a militiamen 'and enforced the judgment of God on the killers'.


Shocking: CNN's Arwa Damon is shown around a torture chamber by Abu Mohammed, a former insurgent commander

The young father-of-three says it is a case of kill or be killed, and that if U.S. forces withdraw he is ready to take up arms again.

'A new battle will start to eliminate the occupiers, agents and government-led militias against the Sunnis,' he tells CNN.

Ms Damon speaks to a doctor who concludes that 70 per cent of Iraqis have suffered psychological trauma, and to a mortuary boss in Baghdad who provides a slideshow of mutilated dead bodies so relatives of missing Iraqis might identify their loved ones.

The film - part of the CNN series World's Untold Stories - looks at the tragic legacy of sectarian violence and the choices of justice Iraqis must choose – justice by reconciliation or by revenge in ongoing cycles of terror.