WARNING TO JERUSALEM IN THE BATTLE OF MOSUL: 8/8: A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Your-Own-City-Travels/dp/0593536886/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
A Stranger in Your Own City is award-winning writer Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s vivid, shattering response. This is not a book about Iraq’s history or an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have consumed the nation over the past several decades. This is the tale of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniacal leader who shaped the state in his own image; a people who watched a foreign army invade, topple that leader, demolish the state, and then invent a new country; who experienced the horror of having their home fragmented into a hundred different cities.
When the “Shock and Awe” campaign began in March 2003, Abdul-Ahad was an architect. Within months he would become a translator, then a fixer, then a reporter for The Guardian and elsewhere, chronicling the unbuilding of his centuries-old cosmopolitan city. Beginning at that moment and spanning twenty years, Abdul-Ahad’s book centers on the West and in its place focuses on everyday people, soldiers, mercenaries, citizens blown sideways through life by the war, and the proliferation of sectarian battles that continue to this day. Here is their Iraq, seen from the inside: the human cost of violence, the shifting allegiances, the generational change.
1918 Baghdad Tigris
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world with Haif Abdul Ahad, a stranger in your own city travels in |
| 0:11.1 | the Middle East long war, Basra 2019, Baghdad 2019. But in this particular instance, it's |
| 0:19.9 | dealing with the status quo anti which is dominated by unemployment and anger at the ruling |
| 0:26.2 | class. I hope I had that right, right? Anger at the ruling class. Absolutely. And who is the |
| 0:30.5 | ruling class in 2019? We are talking about a kleptocratic elite of party bosses, militia |
| 0:39.1 | commanders, religious figures who have been siphoning according to different estimates around |
| 0:47.7 | $20 billion a year from the Iraqi budget during the last 20 years. These figures, these |
| 0:54.7 | kind of political bosses, have created such a state of corruption in Iraq that it's unbelievable. |
| 1:04.0 | I mean, Iraq is not a poor state. We have $120 billion worth of oil every year. But you go to |
| 1:11.0 | certain parts of Baghdad, there's no water, no electricity, no employment, let alone this |
| 1:15.8 | out of the country. So it's this young generation, a young generation that grew up after 2003, |
| 1:21.7 | that was, they were promised democracy, they were promised prosperity. And they looked at their |
| 1:26.9 | lives and they realized that the biggest threat to not only themselves to Iraq and in general is |
| 1:35.2 | corruption and the corruption of these political elites. And this is the, I mean, the uprising itself |
| 1:41.4 | failed because all apprises failed. But what this, what we call it, Tishrin apprises, October |
| 1:46.4 | uprising, it created a benchmark, it created a point when it is a transsectorian, it is where people |
| 1:53.8 | from different parts of the city, the wealthy, the poor, the Sunni, the Shia, the different |
| 1:59.3 | who all pulled into the central square in Baghdad. And they all chanted against the corruption of |
| 2:05.8 | the political elite. It was a rare moment of Iraq, the unity. I mean, again, if we speak in |
| 2:11.8 | sectarian terminology, these are the kids from the Pulsia suburbs, waving the flags of |
| 2:17.0 | Iran, who are saying denouncing Shia clergy and Shia political bosses. That was an amazing |
| 2:22.5 | moment in which the sectarian spell of 2003 fell and collapsed. And, and was a beautiful moment |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.