Baghdad Diary

Am a few days into my Baghdad trip and it has been riveting, frustrating, confounding of my expectations and alarming in almost equal measures. I am not going to say too much because I am here for Unreported World rather than Channel 4 News and if I give away what we’re doing my director Alex will shout at me. The film will probably run in April – but I will let you know! Here are a few more impressions from a week which has included some terrible attacks which saw many people killed and some political skirmishes which may bode ill for the future.

The bombs are being carefully and cleverly targeted at officials and police – and most are currently aimed at Shia Muslims. The campaign is seen as trying to destabilise the country ahead of the Arab League Summit due here in March. The political response has been to insist there will be no return to the dark days of five years ago when thousands of Sunni and Shia people were killed in sectarian fighting. But at the same time there is also a lot of suspicion, finger pointing and rhetoric which all points in essentially the same underlying sectarian direction. The signs are not good.

Iraqi Shias are deeply worried about the situation in Syria. Although they have now officially joined the criticism of President Assad it appears many privately want him to win. One official told me that although he had hated the way Assad had treated his people he was the best of two evils. Many Shias see Syria not as a simple freedom struggle against a violent dictator but as a Sunni revolution being agitated by neighbouring Sunni powers. They claim the weakening of their axis with Iran and Syria and the spreading of Saudi-led Sunni power will end in more attacks from Al Qaeda.

As for trying to work as a journalist here it is quite hard. The supporters of the Prime Minister Maliki feel persecuted by what they describe as the Sunni Arab media and seem suspicious of journalists being out to get them (Not so different to governments nearer to home I suppose). The security services – who are never more than a couple of hundred metres away – try to stop the media filming whenever they can. You are pounced on at every opportunity regardless of whose permission you might have. So we pack up, move on and try again. This is supposed to be a free country now but old habits seem to die hard. There will be many lessons here for other fledgling or would-be democracies in the Middle East.