Irak, destruction d'une nation

- Season 1

(2021)

From the beginning of the 1980s, the tension between the Iran of the mullahs and the Iraq of the Raïs, Saddam Hussein, was at its height. Westerners see in the latter a final bulwark against the Islamist expansion of Iran. As such, the United States, led by Reagan, cooperates militarily with Baghdad. Wanting above all to avoid the rise of Iranian influence, the Westerners will go so far as to close their eyes to the recourse to chemical weapons used by the Raïs. So much so that at the end of this eight-year war, Saddam Hussein believed he had become the protégé of ...

On 2 August 1990, believing himself to be untouchable, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. A decision that would have devastating consequences for his regime. This attack triggered the Gulf War (until Operation Desert Storm, in January-February 1991), during which Iraq will experience the disproportionate firepower of the Americans: 100,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians will lose their lives. To this hecatomb will be added the hundreds of thousands of victims who died of malnutrition as a result of the effects of the twelve-year embargo imposed after the war. But ...

September 11, 2001. The New York attacks on the Twin Towers provide an opportunity for the American government to bring down Saddam Hussein. In order to do so, the Bush administration accuses him of possessing weapons of mass destruction and of having links with Al Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the September 11 attacks. Despite the disapproval of the United Nations Security Council and that of part of the international community that castigates the lies put forward by Washington to declare war, the Iraqi regime is quickly overthrown. Nevertheless, chaos settled in...

In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's death, Iraq is more divided than ever. The Rais was a dictator, but he had managed to hold a people made up of Sunnis, Shiites and ethnic and religious minorities. In 2007, the civil war is raging. The Americans, overwhelmed by the situation, watched helplessly as Islamist terrorism expanded. To fight it, they financed Sunni fighters to stand up to Al Qaeda in Iraq and support the new regime. The coming to power of Barak Obama will, however, change the situation since he will decide on the withdrawal of American troops in 2011. ...