The Frontline Club will be screening a new BBC documentary, Stacey Dooley – Face to Face with ISIS followed by a Q&A with Stacey and director Joshua Baker in conversation with Catrin Nye.
One year on from her first visit to Iraq, Stacey joins Shireen – a 23 year old Yazidi woman who was held as a sex slave for over two years by the so called Islamic State. Shireen managed to escape while she was enslaved in Mosul, but many Yazidi woman like her haven’t, and remain in ISIS captivity.
Shireen takes Stacey back to Mosul, the self-declared capital of ISIS in Iraq. She wants to revisit the places where she was held captive, in order to finally draw a line under the past. In East Mosul, they find the house where Shireen was imprisoned and sexually abused by a leading ISIS executioner for months.
But it’s the Old City of Mosul, where Shireen finally managed to escape ISIS, that means the most to her. With a military escort, the pair travel into the heart of the Old City – where ISIS only months ago made their last stand in a devastating and brutal battle. The danger is real: ISIS militants are still being hunted and unexploded bombs litter the street.
Keen to see justice is being served, Shireen and Stacey sit in on an interrogation of an ISIS suspect in court. But with the Iraqi justice system overwhelmed by the sheer number of ISIS suspects, justice isn’t as clear cut as Shireen and Stacey might have hoped.
Armed with countless unanswered questions, Shireen and Stacey finally have the chance to get answers when they come face to face with a senior ISIS commander in a maximum security facility. He has murdered hundreds of men and raped countless Yazidi women and girls. His frank answers will stay with Shireen and Stacey forever.
Run Time: 44 mins
Credits
Production: Insight TWI
Presenter: Stacey Dooley
Producer Director: Joshua Baker
Producer: Helen Spooner
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The event will take place at the Romantso in Athens.
In October 2016, an elite team of Iraqi Special Forces was tasked with leading the fight to defeat ISIS in Mosul. It was the beginning of a brutal battle of attrition that was to last almost nine months.
Filmed over the course of the whole campaign, MOSUL follows the experiences of four young soldiers: Anmar, a college graduate seeking revenge after his father was the victim of a suicide attack; Hussein, a ruthless sniper and aspiring football player; Jamal, a wise-cracking sergeant; and Amjad, a young recruit excited to be on the frontline.
Full of hope and good intentions at the beginning of the campaign, the soldiers are forced to confront the reality of fighting an elusive and vicious enemy in a city full of trapped civilians who are themselves fearful and suspicious of the army. And with victory in sight, tragedy strikes. When ISIS eventually capitulates, much of the city is destroyed, and the surviving soldiers are left haunted by what they have seen and done.
Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRsBxgO4j4
To book a ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mosul-screening-and-qa-with-filmmakers-olivier-sarbil-and-james-jones-tickets-39248865413
Credits:
Filmed and Directed: Olivier Sarbil
Co-Directed and Produced: James Jones
Produced: Raney Aronson-Rath, Dan Edge
Edited: Ella Newton
Production Managed: Pip Lacey
Following the screening and Q+A there will be drinks and refreshments available
]]>The film is due to be playing in cinemas 11-12 November.
In response to transatlantic events, the Frontline Club and Byline Festival with FFR are coming to New York to launch a US version of their unique festival for independent journalism and free speech. This will be the opening night, a full itinerary of events will be happening on 7th November at the Edition Hotel New York. To book tickets for the 7th November click here.
Programme
Monday 6th November
7pm – Screening of MOSUL at the Bronx Documentary Center
7.30pm – 8.30pm Q&A with film director Olivier Sarbil hosted by Marcia Biggs
8pm – Late drinks reception
A new ICRC, report called ‘I Saw My City Die’ found that between 2010 and 2015, nearly half of all civilian war deaths worldwide occurred in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The majority of these deaths have taken place in cities: Mosul, Aleppo and Taiz. Join our panel to discuss the emerging trend of War in Cities, with comparative studies of different cities and nations, over recent years.
“Over the past three years, our research shows that wars in cities accounted for a shocking 70% of all civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria”, said the ICRC’s Regional Director for the Middle East, Robert Mardini. “This illustrates just how deadly these battles have become. This is all the more alarming as offensives get underway in cities like Raqqa in Syria, or intensify in Mosul, Iraq. A new scale of urban suffering is emerging, where no one and nothing is spared by the violence.”
The conflicts in these countries have resulted in internal displacement and migration levels unprecedented since WWII. More than 17 million Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis have fled their homes. And these battles risk becoming even more protracted if real political solutions are not found soon. Wars in cities are so devastating because of the way in which they are being fought. Armed parties are failing to distinguish between military objectives and civilian infrastructure – or worse, they are using or directly targeting them.
Chair
Nawal Al-Maghafi is an award-winning film journalist specialising on the Middle East. She has worked for BBC Newsnight, BBC World, Middle East Eye and Reuters amongst others. She has reported extensively from Yemen, focusing on the humanitarian situation and the West’s involvement in the conflict. Al-Maghafi was nominated for a Frontline Club Award 2017 for her film covering the human cost of the war in Yemen.
Speakers
Pawel Krzysiek has been working in communications in Syria for much of the war for the ICRC, much of his work has been to cross the frontline of war zones, into besieged towns. He is a primary contributor to this report covering the section on Syria.
Joshua Baker is a documentary filmmaker and a journalist and a contributor to the ICRC Report focusing on the section of ‘Mosul’. Baker was on the frontline with Iraqi special forces as they pushed into civilian neighbourhoods during the battle for Mosul. He witnessed first-hand how civilians were being caught up in the fighting, particularly when a suicide bomb detonated right in front of him. He began his career in print working for The Times as Foreign News Night Editor. More recently Baker completed Africa’s Billion Pound Migrant Trail with Benjamin Zand for BBC. Earlier this year he was an Investigative Producer on two films for BBC Panorama following the terror attacks in Manchester and London, where he secured access to a friend of the Manchester bomber. His film The Battle For Mosul (US title Battle for Iraq) for PBS Frontline and The Guardian was shortlisted for best TV Documentary category at the One World Media Awards and listed for a Grierson Award.
Roland Oliphant is a Senior Foreign correspondent to the Telegraph and until recently covered Russia and the former Soviet Union from the Moscow bureau. He has reported on the Ukrainian revolution and civil war from Kiev, Crimea, and Eastern Ukraine.
Iona Craig is an independent Irish-British journalist. Her work currently focuses on Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. Iona lived in Sana’a from 2010 to 2015 as The Times (of London) Yemen correspondent. She continues to travel back and forth from the country to report on the conflict and deteriorating humanitarian crisis. In June 2014 she won the UK’s most prestigious investigative journalism award, The Martha Gellhorn Prize. Her reporting on an American drone strike that hit a wedding convoy in Yemen was awarded the Frontline Club print award for 2014.
Albina Kovalyova is Television correspondent and producer covering Russia, Ukraine, CIS for FSN and Channel 4 News. Kovalyova has just returned from East Ukraine after doing a report on the impact of fighting on civilian life in front line towns in the country.
Photo Credits: ICRC
]]>The Frontline Club will be screening MOSUL, a new film by Olivier Sarbil and James Jones followed by a Q&A with Olivier and James.
In October 2016, an elite team of Iraqi Special Forces was tasked with leading the fight to defeat ISIS in Mosul. It was the beginning of a brutal battle of attrition that was to last almost nine months.
Filmed over the course of the whole campaign, MOSUL follows the experiences of four young soldiers: Anmar, a college graduate seeking revenge after his father was the victim of a suicide attack; Hussein, a ruthless sniper and aspiring football player; Jamal, a wise-cracking sergeant; and Amjad, a young recruit excited to be on the frontline.
Full of hope and good intentions at the beginning of the campaign, the soldiers are forced to confront the reality of fighting an elusive and vicious enemy in a city full of trapped civilians who are themselves fearful and suspicious of the army. And with victory in sight, tragedy strikes. When ISIS eventually capitulates, much of the city is destroyed, and the surviving soldiers are left haunted by what they have seen and done.
Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGRsBxgO4j4
Credits:
Filmed and Directed by Olivier Sarbil
Co-Directed and Produced by James Jones
Produced by Raney Aronson-Rath, Dan Edge
Edited by Ella Newton
Production Managed by Pip Lacey
A PBS Frontline production in association with Mongoose Pictures and Channel 4
]]>The evening will showcase Duley’s photographs from Erbil, where Emergency UK has set up a surgical centre. Giles will be joined by one of Emergency’s doctors – Dr Jasmine Armour-Marshall to discuss his photography. The main focus of the discussion will be on the medical and humanitarian impact of the fighting in Mosul and the effect this will have on the people there for years to come.
Speakers
Chair: Iain Overton is an investigative journalist, author and the Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence. AOAV is a charity that investigates the impact of explosive weapons and small arms on civilians around the world. Overton has reported on Iraq, Ukraine, Syria, Jordan, Mexico, Columbia to name just a few. His human rights reporting has earned him a Peabody Award and two Amnesty Awards.
Giles Duley works tirelessly to highlight the otherwise untold stories in the most dire environments today. His eminent work has earned him a nomination for the Amnesty International Media Award in 2010 and he was the winner of the Prix de Paris, 2010 and 2012. His work has also come at a huge personal cost when in 2011 while on patrol with the 75th Cavalry Regiment, United States Army in Afghanistan, Duley stepped on an IED. He was severely injured losing both legs and an arm.
Dr Armour-Marshall is a paediatrician, humanitarian and child at heart; Jasmine has recently returned from the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq where EMERGENCY provide primary healthcare for refugees and internally displaced people. She cared for children and families and gave support and training to local healthcare professionals.
Emergency provides free, high-quality healthcare to victims of war, poverty and landmines, alongside building hospitals and training local medical staff. Founded in 1994 Emergency has treated 8 million people in 17 different countries and currently operates in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Sudan and Italy.
Watch Duley’s TED talk on the Legacy of War and Syria here:
http://legacyofwar.com/power-story-tedx/
See some of Duley’s work and interviews for the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/03/giles-duley-photographs-syrian-refugees-lesbos
]]>PBS Frontline and The Guardian present THE BATTLE FOR IRAQ
Iraqi forces have been trying to oust Isis since October but they must fight among, protect and win over the many thousands of civilians in Mosul. In this groundbreaking documentary from director Joshua Baker, made in collaboration with PBS’s Frontline and The Guardian, Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad journeys into the heart of the battle remove ISIS from Iraq to find out what it will mean for the future of his country. However, the war decides to come to him.
Directed by: Joshua Baker (@JoshBakerTV)
Reporter: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad Emmy Award Winning Journalist
Executive Produced by: Dan Edge and Mustafa Khalili
Edited by: Gary Beelders
Runtime: 30′
#BattleForIraqPBS
PBS Frontline, in association with Channel 4, presents HUNTING ISIS
French filmmaker Olivier Sarbil spent six weeks embedded with soldiers from the 1st Battalion, a special unit of Iraq’s elite Golden Division, who are spearheading the battle against ISIS in Mosul. Hunting ISIS follows the dramatic journey the soldiers take as they push deeper and deeper into the city, facing fierce resistance from snipers, suicide bombers and shellfire. The film shows the challenges the soldiers face as they hunt for ISIS fighters who are hiding among the local population and provides a very intimate view of the brutal battle through the eyes of the men who are fighting to free Iraq.
Filmed and Directed by: Olivier Sarbil (@oliviersarbil)
Senior Producers: Dan Edge, James Jones
Edited by: Todd Downing
Managing Editor: Andrew Metz
Executive Producer: Raney Aronson-Rath
Runtime: 24′
#HuntingISIS
“This started before Maliki and will go on long after Maliki.”
– Hayder al-Khoei
From left: Zuhair al-Naher, Dominic Asquith, Hayder al-Khoei, Ian Black and Zaid Al-Ali (via Skype).
Opening the panel discussion on recent developments in Iraq held at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 24 June, Ian Black, Middle East editor for The Guardian, asked why the international community and the government in Baghdad had been taken by surprise by the current crisis.
In introducing the panel, Black stressed the need to look at “Iraq itself, the nature of what is going on, the role and significance of ISIS (and whether it should indeed be called that), the sectarian element of the crisis, the legacy of the invasion of 2003, Iran, the US and our [the UK’s] own role in the current situation.”
Hayder al-Khoei, associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, began by analysing the potential for the crisis to quickly descend “within the next few weeks or even days” into an open Sunni–Shia conflict.
Citing widespread support from local civilians as well as other Sunni militias, al-Khoei stressed that for the most powerful of these insurgent groups their advance had “absolutely nothing to do with winning more rights for the Sunni Arab community . . . or even defending the Sunni Arabs in Iraq despite that being their narrative”.
“It’s much bigger than that. . . . It’s about overthrowing the Iraq government regardless of whether Maliki is prime minister.”
Arguing that while some have chosen to read the rise of ISIS as a direct result of the Iraq invasion, al-Khoei spoke of “a real sense [from talking to people throughout the country] that the jihadist groups and insurgents in Iraq have refused to acknowledge the post-2003 political order” where Shias hold the balance of power.
While acknowledging that Maliki had made mistakes, Zuhair al-Naher, spokesman for the Iraqi prime minster, corroborated this by suggesting that many Sunni politicians “cannot yet understand, or come to terms with the reality that they are a minority”.
While all on the panel agreed that secularism does have a role to play within Iraq, there was also a consensus that this is not yet, at least, a sectarian war. Al-Naher rejected the assertion, propagated in the media and through ISIS, that the Sunnis have been “repressed, downtrodden and marginalised”, citing the positions of power occupied by Sunnis in the military and government and claiming that this was a deliberate attempt by ISIS to define the parameters of the conflict. Most notably al-Khoei cited the objectives of the insurgent groups differing between the ultimate goal of an Islamic Caliphate, as envisioned by ISIS, and the return to a form of pre-2003 secular dictatorship of the Baathists.
https://twitter.com/nicolaannettek/status/481794885448904704
Zaid Al-Ali, a former legal advisor to the UN in Iraq, disagreed that the solution to Sunni unrest was increased “inclusivity in government” – but rather the need to tackle the problems of random arrest and torture faced by ordinary citizens.
Dominic Asquith, British ambassador to Iraq 2006–07, suggested that while insurgents such as ISIS – operating outside centralised urban control command centres – have been ever-present since 2003, the origins of Sunni extremism lay in the lack of any “unifying vision for Iraq”.
“Iraq’s leaders have never combined for something . . . but they have at times taken a united stand against something . . . and it looks as though there is a real risk we will go back to rebuilding a house of cards again.”
Asquith went on to name a potential three-part solution to the current problem. First was to contain ISIS, second was to install a new leadership in Baghdad – one that rejected sectarianism and perhaps embraced de-centralisation – and third was to change the narrative (including the relationship between Iran and the US towards Iraq) of aggressor and victim.
Touching on points by both Asquith and al-Naher, al-Ali agreed that while the responsibility for the crisis was not solely Maliki’s, his eight-year leadership of Iraq meant that there was a need for “a new leader to try their hand”.
Returning to an emerging sectarianism, al-Koehi said:
“Sometimes we over analyse and over read Shia–Sunni conflicts and whether there are regionally backed coup attempts or bribes or a variety of other conspiracy theories. But I genuinely believe sometimes the simplest explanation is the best and, as Zaid [al-Ali] mentioned, this is incompetence.”
To this, Asquith added:
“If you amass the various incompetent decisions taken early on after 2003, we are seeing the effect of those now in terms of creating a confessional system. There was confessionalism instituted right at the outset, there was in retrospect an utterly disastrous de-Baathification process which helped create that distrust between communities and there was a reliance on exiles who didn’t really understand [Iraq]”.
Agreeing that the ultimate aim of ISIS was to provoke an all-out sectarian conflict, the panel concluded by discussing the means by which this might be achieved.
Referencing the ‘hearts and minds campaign’ that ISIS have embarked on and which has emerged from various media outlets, al-Khoei qualified the group’s apparent attempt to moderate themselves as “not coming anywhere near being moderate – it just means they are slightly less extreme”.
For Zaid al-Ali, “it may be that ISIS have been trying to put on a more humanitarian face but they cannot succeed because they are pathologically wired to destroy, kill and terrorise”.
Catch up with the full event here:
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]]>Mohammed Yunis Mohammed, a Mosul policeman, had been drinking when he approached the home of neighbour Salam al-Dosaki, a journalist with the local al-Hadba newspaper, police said. An argument ensued between the two men and Mohammed, an Arab, shot and killed Dosaki, a Kurd, on his doorstep. Mohammed was in police custody on Thursday evening, police said. Police said it was a personal dispute. link