But will the Iraqis’ happiness be short-lived? Many still have mixed feelings about their so-called liberators. They have been living under United Nations-imposed sanctions for 12 years, which were heavily backed by the United States and Britain, and can remember what happened when some heeded President George H. W. Bush’s call to rise up against Saddam in 1991–an estimated 300,000 Shia were rounded up and executed after the failed uprising. Emmy Award-winning Canadian filmmaker Shelley Saywell interviewed dozens of Iraqis throughout the country last October as the country braced itself again for war. The resulting film, “A Generation of Hate,” first broadcast on Canadian television in January, was selected as the closing film at the International Film Festival on Human Rights in Switzerland on April 3 and is now making the rounds among film festivals from Israel to Toronto. The documentary, which Saywell directed, features Iraqis of all ages, educational backgrounds and income who all share similar concerns. They do not like Saddam, but they do not trust the motives of the West either. With Saddam seemingly out of power, Saywell, who has written and directed more than 10 international documentaries in war-torn spots from Sarajevo to Sierra Leone, says the United States and Britain have a unique opportunity to restore the trust of the Iraqi people and repair past damage. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett spoke to Saywell about the Iraqis’ concerns. Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: Why did you do this film? Shelley Saywell: I have been making films for a long time in areas of conflict around the world. But this particular film sort of germinated after September 11. A lot of journalists in the United States and Canada were asking the question after the attacks: “Why do they hate us?” And I couldn’t believe they were asking that question. Having made films in these parts of the world for years, I couldn’t believe that people didn’t know the answer. To me the question is: how do we regain the trust of these people? Do you think Westerners have an accurate perception of the Iraqi people? We tend to insult their intelligence and underestimate what kind of culture and nation it is and has been historically. If any people deserve a chance to try and create a democracy, they do and they can. Now the question is whether we mess this up. Are the Iraqi people really going to be able to take destiny in their own hands? What do they think? They are very wary of the motives of the West and of America. Every single Iraqi you meet–educated or not, poor or middle class, those who suffered directly or indirectly–understand the strategic geography of their area and understand very well their history. They know that Saddam was put into place by the West. Whether they are relieved the war is over quickly or that Saddam is gone, they will watch closely to see what happens next because it is really difficult for them to believe that all this was about liberating them when we haven’t given a damn about them for all these years. They sense ulterior motives; they think this is about their oil. Once Saddam is gone, do you think they’ll see us in a different light? It depends on us completely. We have to give people a reason to trust us. That is the challenge … We have to be thinking long-term about our commitment to these people. When the spotlight moves somewhere else, these people are still trying to get on with their lives, bury their dead, make a democracy. We need to be sensitive to that and try not to let them down. This is an opportunity to undo past damage. You sound hopeful. I’m not that naive. I assume I will go back to Iraq and make another film. And who knows what will have happened? You’ve been to the region before. What were you expecting to find in Iraq last fall? I try not to have preconceived notions because it skews the film. But I wanted to make a film that looked behind the Saddam posters. In documentaries and news footage, you would always see the wide streets and the posters of Saddam. And I always thought, where are the people? It is such a dilemma in Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s regime has been so brutal and so tyrannical. But I felt our policies had failed the Iraqi people time and time again, too. We punished them for 12 years with these horrible sanctions and now we were going to be bombing them. It must be so difficult to watch images from the war of the places you visited just a few months ago. It is really a heartbreaking, nauseating feeling in my stomach. People I know and care about are being traumatized. And I don’t know if they’re OK. I hope they survive this. Have you been able to keep in touch with any of the people you interviewed? The only contact I’ve had was with the university student [in Baghdad], Zanieb Hussain, who speaks English and once lived in Canada. Last week, she said all the windows had blown out of her place. She was shaking and crying into the phone. The other kids don’t even have phones. The only way to find them is to go back to their neighborhoods, if that is possible, after the war. How were you able to get so many regular Iraqi people to trust you enough to open to you? Were any afraid to talk to you? I had a really hard time trying to convince the Iraqi authorities to let us film … I said I thought it was worth knowing the people we were about to bomb and putting real faces to those people, getting into the homes. I wanted to paint a portrait of the people caught in the middle of this in Iraq, on the eve of war. We were actually lucky because [the Information Ministry officials] were so busy with the arms inspections going on. They thought, oh, this is just some little Canadian documentary. Their real concern was that we not film anything military. So we had success in getting some very natural and moving portraits of the Iraqi people. Didn’t you have a government ‘minder’? We had someone from the ministry assigned to our team. But he, like many minders, will go off the record. They all saw the endgame already. They had no doubt we were going to attack Iraq. They were already looking ahead. He would give us suggestions on where to film. Do you think you were perceived differently because you are Canadian? I think if I was from Chicago I could have made the same film. Almost every Iraqi we spoke with said they don’t have anything against the American people but the resentment is against the U.S. government, the foreign policy. There is a huge sense of betrayal. It is really about distrust. How does the West regain their trust? You got incredible access. You said you were the first to shoot the inside of a madrassa–or a training school for mujahedin–in Basra. How did that happen? We were interviewing a sheik who had declared jihad [holy war] against Americans during his sermon. And we’d noticed there were no men. When we asked him, he said that they are all in the religious army. We just about fell off our chairs. He said they are training for street fighting but wouldn’t say anymore. Then we changed tack and talked about religion being on the rise and he mentioned this school, and offered to take us there. Before he could change his mind, we jumped up and said, can you take us now? It happened in an hour and then we were asked to leave. But we got what we needed. The people you spoke with in the madrassa were talking about rising up against the West. But that hasn’t happened as U.S. and British troops swept through the country. What frightened me were the kids who were so desperate so miserable that they’d blow themselves up. But there was no massive jihad against America, nor was there an uprising against Saddam. When I watched the [news] footage today, I was thinking about the way our film ends with Ali Naim [a 15-year-old boy from Basra who was badly injured when an errant U.S. bomb destroyed his home in 1998] saying he and his friends were “hiding a plot” for the Americans. I wonder if his thinking has changed now that the British have overtaken Basra. To me, it is always what is in their hearts for the long-term. In other words, there was never a question that they could really fight the Coalition tanks. What I am interested in–and the cautionary tale in the film–is what these kids are going to be carrying with them forward emotionally.
