Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 17, 2007 TV Review: 'Gangs of Iraq'
By Sreenath Sreenivasan
For a documentary that opens with American troops, on patrol in Baghdad, coming across a corpse killed execution style — with eyes, ears and nose cut off — it’s striking that the most dismaying scene in “Gangs of Iraq” doesn’t come till some 45 minutes later.
It occurs after American and Iraqi troops on a joint operation find and harmlessly detonate a car bomb. As the Americans, pleased at their success, walk away, the camera mike overhears some of the Iraqi soldiers speaking quietly among themselves as they smoke.
“I am telling you there’s nothing here — this is just kid stuff,” one says in Arabic. “The big stuff is not here,” he says. “It’s with my mullah.” The conversation ends when the men notice that the video camera trained on them has a microphone.
That single scene captures a critical reality on the ground four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein: No matter how much the United States tries to help the Iraqi forces “stand up,” as the Bush administration and American military commanders put it, the chances of success are slim if the loyalties of most Iraqis remain with their mullahs, sects and factions, rather than with Iraq itself.
The scene is telling in another way too: as with many things in Iraq these days, the real story is glimpsed, at least by foreigners, in the subtext, in the hidden faces and in whispers around the corner. And “Gangs of Iraq,” the third installment in the “America at a Crossroads” series on PBS and airing tonight, is valuable because it shows viewers something of what American forces really face in trying to train an Iraqi army and police force.
A “Frontline” team spent two months in Iraq late last year and were embedded with American military ”advisory teams” working with Iraqis. Through a series of vignettes, viewers are taken into the streets and mosques and battle zones by the correspondent Martin Smith to witness “Iraqification” firsthand.
Some aspects of the training effort are clearly ill conceived. For example, a motivational speaker, who hasn’t even bothered to learn how to say “My name is Rick” in Arabic, forces recruits to shout the word “freedom” ever louder. “I am here to impose my American will upon you,” he tells the trainees (whose faces, like many in the film, are electronically obscured), and then makes them pledge allegiance to a hand-drawn Iraqi flag. It would be funny if the stakes weren’t so high.
More than 6,000 police officers have been killed over the last four years, Mr. Smith says, as the film crew visits a bombed-out police station. The Iraqi army is supposed to be better trained than the police, but the units shown on “Gangs” are not reassuring, especially as some of them appear to be using their uniforms to settle scores. As an American sergeant-major looks on helplessly, a group of armed Iraqi soldiers dons masks and drives away in a Chevrolet pickup. “It’s a mission — I can’t give you details,” one of the masked men tells him.
Throughout, Mr. Smith serves as the viewers’ surrogate in trying to make sense of what unfolds on screen. He cites a series of poor decisions by Iraqi and United States authorities, which helped ignite the sectarian differences exposed by the occupation. The “gangs” of this story aren’t street gangs in the American sense, but groups that reflect centuries of ethnic strife and which are at war with one another, as well as with foreign forces. Mr. Smith also interviews key officials: the ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority; Gen. David H. Petraeus, currently the senior commander in Iraq; Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; and Aziz al-Hakim, leader of a major Shiite party; among others, many of them disappointingly defensive in their comments.
Bayan Jabr, for example, is a former civil engineer and Shiite who, as the interior minister from 2005 to 2006, was responsible for the nation’s security. When Mr. Smith confronts him about allegations of torture, he quickly invokes Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former United States secretary of defense, to deny responsibility. “Rumsfeld, he don’t know what happened in Abu Ghraib, President Bush don’t know what happened in Abu Ghraib,” Mr. Jabr says. “The soldiers do that or the officers do that.”
And looming over the whole documentary — though he is not interviewed — is Moktada al-Sadr, the fiery Shiite cleric who, says Dexter Filkins, a correspondent for The New York Times who covered Iraq, controls both the largest Shiite bloc in the parliament and the largest militia. The result is that “when he doesn’t get what he wants in parliament, he can call out his friends in the street,” Mr. Filkins says.
The program ends as General Petraeus, who was formerly in charge of the Iraqi training program, takes command of all United States forces. His mission has changed to stopping the violence. His plan to take on Mr. al-Sadr’s army in Baghdad is supposed to be Iraqi-led. But on the street Americans outnumber Iraqi soldiers eight to one.
It is facts like that that cause Matt Sherman, a former interior ministry adviser, to say, “My greatest fear is that in our effort to train and equip Iraqi security forces, what we have been doing is equipping Iraqis for civil war.”
It is to the credit of this program that viewers will better understand Mr. Sherman’s anxiety, and the difficulties facing the United States in Iraq. (A note to viewers: “Gangs of Iraq” includes graphic images, from a man who appears to be shot to death in a street fight to scenes of torture victims alive and dead.)
AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS: Gangs of Iraq. On most PBS stations tonight (check local listings). Sherry Jones for Washington Media Associates and David Fanning for WGBH, executive producers. Marty Smith for RAINMedia, producer.
Sreenath Sreenivasan is a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.
April 17, 2007 TV Review: 'Gangs of Iraq'
By Sreenath Sreenivasan
For a documentary that opens with American troops, on patrol in Baghdad, coming across a corpse killed execution style — with eyes, ears and nose cut off — it’s striking that the most dismaying scene in “Gangs of Iraq” doesn’t come till some 45 minutes later.
It occurs after American and Iraqi troops on a joint operation find and harmlessly detonate a car bomb. As the Americans, pleased at their success, walk away, the camera mike overhears some of the Iraqi soldiers speaking quietly among themselves as they smoke.
“I am telling you there’s nothing here — this is just kid stuff,” one says in Arabic. “The big stuff is not here,” he says. “It’s with my mullah.” The conversation ends when the men notice that the video camera trained on them has a microphone.
That single scene captures a critical reality on the ground four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein: No matter how much the United States tries to help the Iraqi forces “stand up,” as the Bush administration and American military commanders put it, the chances of success are slim if the loyalties of most Iraqis remain with their mullahs, sects and factions, rather than with Iraq itself.
The scene is telling in another way too: as with many things in Iraq these days, the real story is glimpsed, at least by foreigners, in the subtext, in the hidden faces and in whispers around the corner. And “Gangs of Iraq,” the third installment in the “America at a Crossroads” series on PBS and airing tonight, is valuable because it shows viewers something of what American forces really face in trying to train an Iraqi army and police force.
A “Frontline” team spent two months in Iraq late last year and were embedded with American military ”advisory teams” working with Iraqis. Through a series of vignettes, viewers are taken into the streets and mosques and battle zones by the correspondent Martin Smith to witness “Iraqification” firsthand.
Some aspects of the training effort are clearly ill conceived. For example, a motivational speaker, who hasn’t even bothered to learn how to say “My name is Rick” in Arabic, forces recruits to shout the word “freedom” ever louder. “I am here to impose my American will upon you,” he tells the trainees (whose faces, like many in the film, are electronically obscured), and then makes them pledge allegiance to a hand-drawn Iraqi flag. It would be funny if the stakes weren’t so high.
More than 6,000 police officers have been killed over the last four years, Mr. Smith says, as the film crew visits a bombed-out police station. The Iraqi army is supposed to be better trained than the police, but the units shown on “Gangs” are not reassuring, especially as some of them appear to be using their uniforms to settle scores. As an American sergeant-major looks on helplessly, a group of armed Iraqi soldiers dons masks and drives away in a Chevrolet pickup. “It’s a mission — I can’t give you details,” one of the masked men tells him.
Throughout, Mr. Smith serves as the viewers’ surrogate in trying to make sense of what unfolds on screen. He cites a series of poor decisions by Iraqi and United States authorities, which helped ignite the sectarian differences exposed by the occupation. The “gangs” of this story aren’t street gangs in the American sense, but groups that reflect centuries of ethnic strife and which are at war with one another, as well as with foreign forces. Mr. Smith also interviews key officials: the ambassador L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority; Gen. David H. Petraeus, currently the senior commander in Iraq; Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki; and Aziz al-Hakim, leader of a major Shiite party; among others, many of them disappointingly defensive in their comments.
Bayan Jabr, for example, is a former civil engineer and Shiite who, as the interior minister from 2005 to 2006, was responsible for the nation’s security. When Mr. Smith confronts him about allegations of torture, he quickly invokes Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former United States secretary of defense, to deny responsibility. “Rumsfeld, he don’t know what happened in Abu Ghraib, President Bush don’t know what happened in Abu Ghraib,” Mr. Jabr says. “The soldiers do that or the officers do that.”
And looming over the whole documentary — though he is not interviewed — is Moktada al-Sadr, the fiery Shiite cleric who, says Dexter Filkins, a correspondent for The New York Times who covered Iraq, controls both the largest Shiite bloc in the parliament and the largest militia. The result is that “when he doesn’t get what he wants in parliament, he can call out his friends in the street,” Mr. Filkins says.
The program ends as General Petraeus, who was formerly in charge of the Iraqi training program, takes command of all United States forces. His mission has changed to stopping the violence. His plan to take on Mr. al-Sadr’s army in Baghdad is supposed to be Iraqi-led. But on the street Americans outnumber Iraqi soldiers eight to one.
It is facts like that that cause Matt Sherman, a former interior ministry adviser, to say, “My greatest fear is that in our effort to train and equip Iraqi security forces, what we have been doing is equipping Iraqis for civil war.”
It is to the credit of this program that viewers will better understand Mr. Sherman’s anxiety, and the difficulties facing the United States in Iraq. (A note to viewers: “Gangs of Iraq” includes graphic images, from a man who appears to be shot to death in a street fight to scenes of torture victims alive and dead.)
AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS: Gangs of Iraq. On most PBS stations tonight (check local listings). Sherry Jones for Washington Media Associates and David Fanning for WGBH, executive producers. Marty Smith for RAINMedia, producer.
Sreenath Sreenivasan is a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.