Sakir Khader grew up in two worlds: Vlaardingen and Palestine. While his Dutch friends went on vacation to France or Spain, he spent the summer months among the stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank. In Palestine, Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, was seen as a hero. In the Netherlands, it was a villain. Sakir's grandfather called Iraq the paradise of the Arabs, it was the only place where the Arabs had anything of pride. What is true of the paradise he envisioned?

In the five-part series 'The Ruins of Iraq', made in co-production with VICE Studios, Dutch-Palestinian filmmaker Sakir Khader (1990), accompanied by his friend and field producer Mohamed Rasool, travels for six months in the Iraq that we don't get to see in the news. As a camjo director he speaks with Iraqi’s who were left behind in the places where the dust of four generations of war is slowly settling. How will their lives go on now that the ISIS caliphate has fallen and the danger seems to have passed?

Ever since former U.S. President George W. Bush Jr. began a campaign to end the rule of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the state of Iraq has been unstable. Bush promised the people freedom and democracy, but Iraqis faced waves of violence. In recent years, Iraq has been in the spotlight again because of the fight against ISIS. Militias, the Iraqi army and the international coalition began an offensive to put an end to the feared terror group. With IS no longer in territorial control, residents who experienced years of misery and bloodshed are left behind.

#iraq

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