When Saddam’s regime toppled, dreams were hovering over my country: soon I am there again after a quarter of a century in exile. Soon I am by my mother’s grave without security forces following me and my people, without fear and daily terror.
But I had an ambivalent attitude towards the American occupation: how would the people be treated after the occupation and how would they welcome the occupier.
I believed in the Western media that told us that what happens in Iraq is a sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shiite Moslems. It is terrorists that kill civilians and children and want an unstable democratic Iraq. American soldiers are there to protect democracy.
And I believed this.
Suddenly I see this film. And the whole picture of the conflict is turned upside down. It is not sectarian terror, but the resistance of the people against the occupation and the consequences of the ”War on terror”. Here we see Sunni and Shiite Moslems fighting side by side against the occupier. The boys in the alley who run around in Baghdad’s streets suddenly reminded me of the Norwegian resistance fighting the Nazis during the war.
The media image started to crack when I saw this film. It is a film that tears up the mask that American propaganda uses as camouflage.
My dreams are still hovering over my country. Walid al-Kubaisi

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