a tragedy in four acts

FRANCE 5 – SUNDAY JANUARY 31 AT 8.50 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

If no one has forgotten the attacks of November 13, 2015, in particular around the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), where three men blew themselves up, who remembers that the first of them them was Iraqi?

The question, asked in the introduction toIraq, destruction of a nation, recalls that the history of this oil power is closely linked to France. Particularly since the emergence, in the 1970s, of Saddam Hussein on the national political scene. The director of this four-part documentary series, Jean-Pierre Canet, has chosen the figure of the raïs as a common thread to retrace the forty years – two wars, a blockade and two dictatorships – which led Iraq to chaos. “The Ally”, “The Adversary”, “The Condemned”, “The Phantom”: these four fascinating episodes, scheduled in succession, are based on exceptional testimonies.

The director thus found Mokdad Al-Sabaawi, sheikh of the Sabaawi tribe, with a still youthful face, who well remembers the young Ammar Al-Sabaawi, one of the suicide bombers of Saint-Denis. He was originally from Mosul, was 18 years old and belonged to his tribe, from which he had been banished. Mohammed Zaki, in his fifties, is a trader in Mosul, in the district where Ammar was born. As a child, he knew him alive and happy, when “Between neighbors, Christians or Muslims, we lived together like brothers”. This former soldier regrets that there is not a man “Like Saddam” at the head of Iraq.

Many senior local politicians have also agreed to be questioned, such as Massoud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan between 2005 and 2017, or even Oussama Al-Noujaïfi, Sunni leader and Iraqi vice-president from 2016 to 2018.

Operation “Desert Storm”

The documentary filmmaker returns at length to Operation “Desert Storm”, carried out in 1990 by the Americans and their allies, to counter the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s troops, with the testimonies, on the French side, of Roland Dumas (Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1988 to 1993) and Jean-Pierre Chevènement (Minister of Defense between 1988 and 1991).

On the American side, Lieutenant General Buster Glosson proudly explains how he designed the intervention around the F-117 stealth aircraft. Paul Bremer, former administrator of the coalition in Iraq (2003-2004), or Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense between 2001 and 2005, also come to recount their memories, to compare their points of view. Some testimonies are poignant, others revolting. Particularly when it is recalled, on the evocation of the “case of the incubators” (on false testimonies claiming that Iraqis would have killed babies at the maternity hospital in Kuwait-City), how far has the propaganda of the American authorities gone to convince the public opinion of the merits of triggering the operation.