Opinion | 'Once upon a time in Iraq': a Kurdistan-sized hole in BBC documentary

The five-part BBC documentary ‘Once Upon a Time in Iraq’ has received almost universal critical acclaim  since its release earlier this month.

Its core is the moving testimony of several witnesses, including a New York Times correspondent and his photographer, a disillusioned American colonel, an Iraqi disfigured by an insurgents’ bomb, a young Iraqi who initially welcomed the US invasion, a Saddam loyalist and the academic who bravely ran 'Mosul Eye' under the noses of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Several issues are skimmed over superficially, perhaps inevitably. One of these is de-Baathification, which was initially applied too
extensively and then narrowed because many professions required Baath party membership and only those above a certain level were culpable for the regime’s crimes. That there was demand from Iraqis for de-Baathification wasn’t mentioned, instead left hanging as an egregious and insensitive American miscalculation.

The BBC doesn’t claim it is a comprehensive account of Iraq since 2003, but one that gets the viewer closer to understanding the war and the rise of ISIS.

Most significantly, however, Kurds were barely mentioned, and then only in passing. There were two fleeting and unexplained images of dead victims in Halabja in the fourth episode and two references to the Kurds in the fifth episode, the most important of which was the liberation of Mosul by the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi army. The book that accompanies the documentary may have more on the Kurds, but fewer people will read that.

It beggars belief that there is no testimony from anyone in the Kurdistan Region, which contains about a fifth of the population of Iraq. Just imagine the reaction to a documentary on the UK that ignored Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland.

A few random facts may illustrate why the almost complete absence of Kurdistan matters: April 9 is Baghdad liberation day and is formally marked in Kurdistan,commemorating the end of Baathist regime in Iraq which persecuted the Kurds for decades. A Kurdish party is the single biggest in the Iraqi parliament and all Iraqi presidents since the invasion have been Kurdish. Christians flee to the Kurdistan Region in large numbers, as have displaced people from Mosul and elsewhere in Nineveh province. 

The omission of Kurds in the documentary gives a misleading impression of the dynamics of Iraqi politics. It makes the Sunni/Shia schism seem more dominant and neglects the occasional role of Kurdish leaders as kingmakers who helped stabilise Iraq’s nascent democratic process after 2003.

Documentaries have to start somewhere, and 2003 is an obvious place to begin, but not one that offers the best historical perspective. Too many outsiders ignore the long-run up to the explosion of ethnic cleansing and civil war after the invasion, which is seen as the start of the decline rather than an episode in a longer history.

For example, a prominent British leftist writer once rounded on former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for having “opened the gates to hell” with the 2003 invasion. The truth is that the gates to hell were opened well before then. The Kurds were forcibly incorporated by the British into Iraq and have rarely enjoyed cordial relations while Sunni minority dominance was favoured by the Americans until Saddam went too far by invading Kuwait.

Saddam’s brutality kept the lid on sectarianism in a foul way in his "republic of fear." The BBC documentary mentions the violent suppression of the Shia uprising in 1991 and the terrible revenge of Saddam against Shias who were related to those who attempted to assassinate him. Saddam's death was always likely to expose and explode such repressed communal conflict.

Iraq is a fragile country and has been for many years. Widespread corruption obstructs rebuilding the country while military power is not fully under state control. Kurdish perspectives could have better provided viewers with a more nuanced picture than the documentary’s dominant pessimistic narrative.

Here’s an example of testimony that could have fitted into the documentary. Go to the Red House in Sulaimani. The museum is a former Baathist prison where thousands were cruelly murdered. Back in 2006, I recall seeing its guards glued to the television as they watched the live trial of Saddam. The testimony of perhaps one of those guards would have given a deeper insight into the fuller Iraqi story.

The Kurdistan Region has far to go in reforming itself but has achieved much in increased life expectancy, womens' rights, and religious pluralism that could show that Iraq is not inevitably mired in misery forever.

The BBC should perhaps commission a documentary on the experience of Kurdistan to give its viewers a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of Iraq – the good as well as the bad and the ugly. It’s the least the BBC could do to make up for its stunning omission of the Kurds from a documentary that will be seen around the world.

Gary Kent is the Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), a Fellow of Soran University, and Deputy Chair of the European Technology and Training Centre in Erbil. He writes this column for Rudaw in a personal capacity. The address for the all-party group is appgkurdistan@gmail.com.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.

 

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