FROM BAGHDAD WITH LOVE TRANSCRIPT
What does a self-exiled Iraqi journalist do when he makes it to safety in neighbouring Jordan from his war-ravaged country? Simple – he sets up his own TV station, of course, and broadcast 24 hours a day, back into his hapless homeland. But, as Sophie McNeill reports, it's not exactly light entertainment that he's beaming back to Baghdad.
REPORTER: Sophie McNeill
It's sunset on another peaceful afternoon in the Jordanian capital, Amman. It's easy to see why so many Iraqis fled from their country to come here. But for some, the horrors of home are never far away.
ROUNA BHAJAT, IRAQI JOURNALIST, (Translation): This is Al-Babilya news. Welcome. At least 13 people have been killed and 80 others injured ....have left around 400 dead and more than 1300 injured.
From this small studio in Amman, Iraqi journalist Rouna Bhajat informs her audience back home of the day's news. Rouna left Baghdad last year to come to work for Al-Babilya Television, a news channel which broadcasts into Iraq 24 hours a day
ROUNA BHAJAT, (Translation): In Iraq we were at risk because we are media people, my husband and I, media figures have no freedom in Iraq. We were scared to leave the house or to go to work. We felt scared.
Al-Babilya was started two years ago. Most people working here are refugees from Iraq.
REPORTER: Have you still have lots of family in Baghdad?
BAM: Yeah, my parents, my brother. Yeah, they're all in Baghdad. I’m here alone.
23-year-old Bam came to Jordan last year.
BAM: Your heart stops for a while when you read the news because it's like, "Oh, my god!" You imagine your mum is passing that bridge right now, and we don’t want to imagine that. I worry about them all the time. I miss them all the time. You’re going to make me cry. Yeah, so... It's horrible.
Iraqi businessman Sadeq Mitlak is the founder and chief financier of Al-Babilya. From afar, he watched his homeland torn apart by sectarian violence. Sadeq decided to create a new channel for Iraqis, one that didn't align with any particular religious sect.
SADEQ MITLAK, IRAQI BUSINESSMAN, (Translation): So we thought of setting up a channel, a centrist one that would appeal to all Iraqi factions. It addresses Iraqis, you are an Iraqi citizen regardless of whether you are a Muslim, a Christian, a Sunni, a Shiite, a Kurd or this or that.
Sadeq uses his station to broadcast a hardline message about the US involvement in Iraq, and has no apologies for what Al-Babaliya shows. For him, it's part of a wider struggle. This is the channel's promotional video that runs throughout the day. At Al-Babilya, American troops are referred to as "the occupying forces" and no opportunity to criticise the US is missed.
SADEQ MITLAK, (Translation): We support everyone who resists the occupier, everyone. Kurdish, Sunni, Shiite, Sadr even the High Council. Anyone resisting the occupier has our support.
Sadeq received this video from insurgents in Iraq a few days ago.
SADEQ MITLAK, (Translation): A US Humvee being destroyed and those in it killed. They contact us via the internet and send their operations to the Al-Babilya site or via emails to Al-Babilya, to the program’s site. When we get the footage we download it and use it in our news. We show resistance operations as a way of helping and morally supporting them.
REPORTER: If someone in Iraq watched these videos and then they got inspired to attack the Americans, how would that make you feel?
SADEQ MITLAK, (Translation): We are pleased with anyone who resists the occupier. I myself sometimes think of putting on a belt and blowing up Americans, they took over my country, destroyed the infrastructure, they destroyed the Iraqi identity, they destroyed our spirit.
While Sadeq makes no secret of his contempt for the US, I ask him if the Jordian authorities have an issue with him broadcasting such provocative material.
SADEQ MITLAK, (Translation): So far the Jordanians have not caused us any trouble because as a matter of fact, no Arab with a sense of Arab nationalism would be opposed to what we are doing. Jordan knows Iraq is occupied and that the occupier has to leave, all Arab countries do.
This afternoon Sadeq has been called in to fix a problem at the studio. A live talk show is being recorded and viewers are calling in from all around Iraq to chat with the show’s host.
SADEQ MITLAK, (Translation): It’s difficult, the lines keep cutting out.
Despite these technical difficulties, Sadeq says it's nothing compared to the sort of problems journalists in Iraq are faced with.
SADEQ MITLAK, (Translation): Our Bagdad correspondents do not disclose their names or their locations, if we were working in Bagdad we would not last a month.
Abou Uday is in charge of the studio. He worked for Iraqi state television for over 30 years. Part of his job was filming the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
REPORTER: That’s you?
ABOU UDAY: Yes. Yes.
REPORTER: What year was that?
ABOU UDAY, (Translation): That was in the eighties.
After the regime was overthrown, Abou Uday was accused of being a Saddam loyalist and received death threats.
ABOU UDAY, (Translation): I used to film on special occasions, Feasts, I was well known in the media. They used to see me filming officals, I used to be on TV a lot when I was filming saddam Hussein.
In 2003, the first American administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremmer, fired everyone who had worked for Saddam’s regime. Abou Uday says this was an arbitrary decision that devastated his life.
ABOU UDAY, (Translation): They threw us on to the street, the military ruler from America threw us out and we were labelled as Saddam’s media men, we were employees. Was I meant to tell the president “I won’t film you” or “We won’t show you on television” What could the people do?
24-year-old Afal is also from Baghdad. He's worried about his fiancee, who's still in Iraq.
AFAL, (Translation): She lives in Hay Al-Adel, it is the area where most clashes take place, there are always kidnappings and killings there, every day there are bodies in the streets. When she rang me yesterday she said she had fainted that morning, she opened the door and found a body.
It's not a conventional courtship but Afal finds a way to make it work.
AFAL, (Translation): When I am in front of the camera I don’t see it, I don’t think people are watching me, I just see her in front of me. When I do the business report I imagine her in front of me.
Afal is a Sunni and has every reason to hate Shiites. They killed his three brothers in 2003. But here in Amman, Afal has forged a close connection with a Shiite colleague named Khalil.
AFAL, (Translation): Khalil is my best friend here, he is the one that I talk to the most, we joke with each other, we go for lunch together.
Breaking the Sunni-Shiite barrier was not easy.
AFAL, (Translation): He was not that close to me at the beginning, we had a misunderstanding, we had some issues, but when we got acquainted we formed a strong relationship. If I was in Bagdad, I would be scared to be friends with a Shiite, I would worry he’d do to me what was done to my brother. A Shiite friend killed him for asking to marry his sister. How could I feel safe around one? I am trying to get over it, it’s true I suffered a lot, I lost the three most important people in my life but it was the will of God.
Afal's friend Khalil reads the news every second night.
KHALIL, (Translation): In every Iraqi family there have been casualties, in the current situation there are more casualties than during the Iran – Iraq war. Now there are more martyrs and victims killed ruthlessly, killed for no reason, in cold blood.
Khalil rejects the notion that life has drastically improved in Iraq because of the recent surge of US forces.
KHALIL, (Translation): Where’s the improvement? There are the militias, there are gangs there as well, killings here and there, explosions here and there, what stability? It does not exist. Forget the media propaganda, we look at the real situation, Western media don’t present the full picture. Western citizens should rely on Arabic media, they try to see the problems, the deteriorating situation.
Al-Babilya receives and screens a lot of footage that doesn't get shown in the West. The station's cameraman recorded these pictures of a Baghdad morgue in late 2006. Sadeq Mitlak knows these pictures are hard for his audience to watch, but he says it's more important to show what life in Iraq is really like.
SADEQ MITLAK, (Translation): Before, when someone died, we’d say so and so passed away, we’d remember him for a year and visit his family, now there are multiple deaths and mass burials, four at a time. When I was in Iraq, every day one of my friends would be buried, we had a soccer team, I am the only one alive. We had 11 players on each side, I’m the only one alive.
Reporter/Camera
SOPHIE MCNEILL
Editor
DAVID POTTS
Fixer
ALIA HAMZEH
Subtitling
DALIA MATAR
JOSEPH ABDO
Producer
KIM CAMBERG
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN