This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batchel. A stranger in your own city.

Haith Abdullah Haid's new book travels in the Middle East long war. This is the Iraq war before and after the American presence.

It is now 2003, 2004. Our protagonist, is a journalist, a photojournalist. He has a camera.

He's attached to journalism, English language journalism coming out of Iraq. He's acted as a translator.

But it is now very much a war as observed by a keen member of the Baghdad city. In other words, this is a Baghdad

resident who sees his own city transforming itself with American presence after the war, the looting

after the war, the great relief people concerned about the future, the lack of

American preparation, the blunder of dismissing the army, the blunder of driving out the

bath party, so there was no structure whatsoever. And the re-entry of exiles. And I'm keen on this

race because it's a story that we see repeated again and

again through history. When the exiles come back, it's as if they're frozen in time. They

remember a city they left. What did it mean for Iraq that the exiles rushed back in? Many of them

would become leaders in the American version of Iraqi governance.

John, this is a very, very accurate description. It's people who went back to a city,

and they were frozen in time. So when they left Iraq, some of the 50s, some in the 60s, others

in the 70s, they lived in exile in cocoons of paranoia because the regime was hunting them.

And the Iraq they took with them was very different from the Iraq that they came back to.

That Iraq they came back to had suffered under the regime for 20, 30 years, had lived through the sanctions.

I mean, the cleavid between the exiles and the Iraqis cannot be more emphasized.

Many of those exiles were, you know, allying themselves with Iran during the Iraq-Iran war.

And even for, I think for most of the Iraqis, they saw that as a treason.

And some of them were taking part in the war against the Iraq itself.

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