Unreported World: Iraq: On The Front Line

Series 30, episode 0

Channel 4's critically acclaimed foreign affairs strand, Unreported World, returns for its tenth run. In the wake of the July London bombings, this five-part series looks at the fact and fiction in 'The War on Terror'. In the first film, Iraq: On the Front Line, Peter Oborne travels to Iraq where he joins a US Infantry Division based in Baqubah, near Baghdad. It is a beleaguered town plagued by frequent and unpredictable insurgent attacks. In only two months, 200 of the 1,000 Iraqi soldiers operating in the area were killed in these attacks. But who are the insurgents? Oborne identifies two groups: the first are dissatisfied Baathists - former Saddam supporters and overwhelmingly Sunni - threatened by what they see as an expanding Shia and Kurdish power-base. The second group are Islamic militants, largely from abroad, loosely linked to Al-Qaeda. If the US is to transfer power to the Iraqis long term, they must find a way to increase stability. While many agree that politics - not armed conflict - is the key to finding a solution, can and will the US ever talk to 'terrorists'? As American soldiers work at winning the hearts and minds of the locals, Oborne asks is there a civil war in the making?