Michael Wood made this documentary in 1993. It is highly instructive for us today to recall what happened in March 1991, when the Shia decided to rise up against Saddam Hussein.
On February 15, 1991, George Bush senior invited the Iraqi people to “force Saddam Hussein to step aside and rejoin the family of the peace-loving nations.” One month later, the Iraqis took him at his word.
The US army was still in Iraq and the country was still a no-fly zone. But despite this, Saddam was given a free hand to use helicopters to bomb those cities that tried to force him to step aside. As result, more than 100,000 died at the hands of the Iraqi army.
This documentary uses footage from two amateur film-makers — two brothers, of whom only one survived – to reveal what happened in the city of Karbala during the uprising. Karbala is a holy town for Shiia Muslims and the destination of thousand of pilgrims; it is where, despite all the security measurements, hundreds were killed on March 2, 2004, in a terrorist attack.
The documentary lasts about 30 minutes, it is in English with subtitles in Arabic and was originally posted by sotaliraq, an Iraqi blog in Arabic.
