 One day I was walking to school when a man tried to force me into a car where another man was waiting. I kicked and screamed. People on the streets rushed to help me and they eventually let me go. My family and I left Iraq the next day. A local militia had threatened the associated press where my dad was a reporter. The militia was upset with recent coverage of its activities and ended up murdering his colleague and lodging a bullet in the head of his three-year-old son. After the shock of what happened to me wore off. My parents choked that kidnappers changed their minds after being exposed to what I was like as a teenager. This is the kind of humor that Iraqis are known for. The darker the better. And it's one reason that Ahmad al-Bashir, the country's most influential media figure, has managed to capture the hearts of Iraqis. Half of Iraq's total population regularly tunes into his show. Al-Bashir was born and raised in Ramadi, Iraq, which experienced the worst of the Iraq war. He lost several family members, including his brother and father. In 2005, he was kidnapped and tortured by a Shia militia. 16 years later, Al-Bashir has built a remarkably successful show by criticizing the Iraqi government and its corruption. I spoke to Al-Bashir at the Oslo Freedom Forum, a conference that gathers media figures, activists and dissidents to talk about government oppression and human rights violations all over the world. Al-Bashir and I talked about the situation in Iraq and the Iraqi elections. They say, before Saddam, we have one Saddam. Now, we have a thousand Saddam. Every corner in Iraq, there is a small dictator. And whoever says anything about him, he would be killed publicly. I wanted to joke about escaping my kidnappers, but I thought it might be inappropriate since he couldn't escape his. You think that was funny? I think it's hilarious. I'm going to just go ahead and welcome you to Reason. Thank you so much for talking to us. I'm really excited to talk about the future of Iraq. We've gone over a lot of things where I look online and everything that I see about Iraq is more of what happens in the past and how it's affecting the future currently. And I'm interested in seeing what the future is going to look like for Iraq. I left Iraq in 2005 during the first elections. I didn't even get to see the elections. I left, I think, a week before the elections. You missed a very beautiful thing. I saw it on the road that it was a good time to leave as we were leaving. Yes. So as we were leaving Iraq, throughout the whole trip, every day I was like, oh my god, if there is a time to leave, this is a good time. So my questions to you are, what has changed since then? By the way, 2005 elections, first of all, thank you very much for having me. It's my pleasure to be with you. 2005 elections is much better than 2021 elections. Although there was security issues, there were problems, and people were choosing according to their sex and religion. But at least we had the sense of democracy. That was the beginning of 2005. Then 2010 election also was very good elections, I would say. There was a fraud. There is no elections in Iraq without a fraud. But people participated in it in huge numbers, actually. I would say 75% of Iraqis went to vote in that elections. The future of Iraq depends on the democracy system, the whole thing, the whole process, not only elections. Unfortunately, we are just, they're giving them the Iraqis only the elections without anything else. So when you get that, you get dictators. Not one, several dictators. There is what you call clipocracy, I guess. It's the right, correct. So when you say, when you give them elections, you mean like the only part where Iraqis get involved is the voting, like when they actually have to go vote. Exactly. And beyond that, there's no information about who are they voting for, what kind of reforms these new people might make in Iraq. How are they different than the people before them? That's not something that Iraqis are exposed to prior to any elections. Actually, the candidates themselves now, this election in 2021, not a single of them has a program, like political program. He wants to go to the parliament to vote for, to be part of the process of the parliament. But he thinks himself and he, he, how do we say it? Present himself. Present himself. Present himself as he's a local, local council member. He promised them that he will build them roads and establish schools for them. Although it's not his job as a parliament member to build roads for the people or to build hospitals or schools. Okay. The whole parliament, maybe when they choose a government, then they will do it. They don't understand the political system. They don't understand why they're going to the parliament. I'm going to go because just for a second, because I know that Iraqi election process is different than the process in the US. In the US, it's a two-party system. You vote for, you know who your president will be by voting for the president before the elections. Will you elaborate on how the Iraqi elections work? Because they're very different. That's the thing that I want to talk to you about. So on 2010, Iraqis thought when we vote for a bigger bloc, this bloc will form the government, the new government. So we got Al-Alawi winning with 91 seats in 2010. Nur Al-Maliki was the second place, 89. So technically, the constitution says the bigger bloc, the winner in the elections will form the new government. And by bloc, you mean the bigger party? The bigger bloc, not party, not one party. So what is the bloc? It's a coalition of parties. So the Iraqi won with 91 seats in the parliament. So basically, they're the winners. According to the constitution, they're the winners. Al-Alawi should be the prime minister, because that's what they wanted to present at that time. Then Joe Biden and D.C. and Tehran decided that no, we're going to choose Nur Al-Maliki over Al-Alawi because we think that Nur Al-Maliki is more Shi'a than Al-Alawi. And then Iraqis felt that if we're voting and we're going to the elections and we support someone or support some party, and then D.C. and Tehran decides who's going to be the prime minister, why would we go from the first place? To give some people more seats and give them some more money? That's when the Iraqis lost faith in democracy. That's when the Iraqis thought that there's no point of going to the elections anymore. And Nur Al-Maliki became prime minister. And you've seen what happened because of losing faith in democracy. We had ISIS. Before ISIS, we had protests, big protests. On 2014 also, there was elections. And the same thing happened also. Nur Al-Maliki won. But Nur Al-Maliki didn't become the prime minister. And then you got also, sorry, 2018 Muhtara Sader won. And he didn't get the prime minister. And then we got the protest of 2019. So they don't understand that people lost faith in democracy in Iraq because of the people who brought democracy to Iraq. They were the reason of why people lost faith in democracy. Let's talk about this a little bit because I think that I'd like to explain to most Americans how the new Iraqi government was formed. So when the U.S. established, when the U.S. entered Iraq, there was a period of time where we didn't have a government. And it was the best time. I think it was 2003. There was no government at all. It was the best time, actually. Really? It was the best time in Basra. It was amazing. Really? I don't know what happened with you guys, but there was no government in Basra. We had like, you'd go in the streets and then you'll see a person on the street like getting out of his car and like directing traffic. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Remember that. And then people go back to their car and they start to drive and like you get traffic again and then somebody else gets out of the car. And you go to one of Saddam's padduses and take whatever you want. Yeah, it was like, it was like, yeah, it was everybody. It was like, you finally got, yeah, you got freedom. There was no safety, but you got 100% freedom. So then there was the formation of the government. And the way it worked, it was we had multi-party system, right? So we had multiple parties that were participating in the elections. And I think there was halfway through, I think the, you realize that if you vote for a party, even though it's, it was presented in a sectarian manner in a way. So will you please, will you talk about like, how did that play out through? Like, talk to me like, if I had known nothing about the Iraqi elections, how does it work? Or how was it established? So in Iraq, the elections is different from the US. I'm talking to an American person now. Yes. In Iraq, we vote for parties and these parties go to the parliament and then in the parliament, they decide who is the president of Iraq. And then the president decides who is the prime minister of Iraq. First of all, the parliament choose the speaker of the parliament, then they choose the president, then the president choose the prime minister. Here in this process, it's not very easy because then you will have people blackmailing other people, people bribing people, people threatening people because it's not democracy. It's actually the mafias and these mafias are controlling the country now in 2010 and 2021. But before, no, it was a little bit different, a little bit. And in the parties, there was a realization, for example, like a lot of the parties that were participating in the elections early on were parties that were brought on by the US. Like there was a Dalai party, there is better. And yeah, there was a kind of like, most of them are, yeah. So there was a process where the Iraqi parliament with those parties realized that they cannot win seats, they cannot win the elections unless they kind of have to form what you called blocks. So for example, you can end up with a, if we were talking about the way it was set up for in terms of sexism, you can end up with a Sunni president if those parties were fragmented and people just voted for them separately. Does that make sense? No. So like if you're, the block was not together, for example, if Hezbollah ran on its own, Fedekh better ran on its own, I don't know what's called now, but at the time, better. And you got like, for example, the Sunni parties, you know, in one coalition, so they could win the elections because they got the most votes. No, it's not possible. How is it not possible? Because they, you know, the seats of the provinces, it was chosen that every province according to the number of the people who are living in that province and city. And we don't have statistics. So we don't know until this moment how many people lives in Baghdad, for example. They say it's approximately 8 million, but it's not 8 million. No one knows how much, how many people, sorry. And in Mosul, for example, there are also 32 seats for the parliament because they say it's approximately 3 million, but it's not 3 million. Until this moment, we don't have real statistics about the Iraqis who are living in Iraq. And no one is able to do this. Yes, the census. It's not allowed for the Iraqi government to make the census because Iran is refusing that completely. Okay. And if you can create, so every coalition will win in his provinces only. The other coalition will win. Anyways, in his provinces also. So that's the problem. You can't ever have something moderate. Except in 2010, we got al-Iraqiyyah. I'm not defending, actually, I don't like al-Allah at all. I think he's cowered and he escapes and he left responsibility and he just, he's looking for money and he's inheriting his legacy to his daughter. Talk a little bit about al-Iraqiyyah, like what happened with it? He won the elections and then what did he do? He won the elections and he wanted to be the prime minister. Okay. You like him, you don't like him, but he won. You should support him to become the prime minister. There was conflict between Iran, Iran and D.C. and there was conflict, Iran and the U.S. There was conflict between many, many parties inside Iraq. And then they said, okay, let's go for a new explanation for the constitution. The constitution says the winner block will form the government. They say no. They said no. The winner block after the first session of the parliament, then you form a new block. This block will form the government. And it wasn't like that before. So they changed the constitution after elections. They didn't change the constitution. They reinterpreted the constitution. Exactly. So that's when Iraqis were like, so you mean whatever I do according to this constitution, they go and explain it in another way, the way that they interest them? I'm not going to be a part of this. What did Al-Adallah would do when this happened? What did his block do? They promised him that he became a strategic council president, but they didn't do that. So he bi-coded the, he left, right? Didn't he leave? He didn't left. He actually, they wanted him to become, then he became vice, vice prime minister, I guess. Okay. No, no, vice president. Okay. And then they sent them home. Yeah. So when you talk about, explain a little bit when you talk about, they sent him home. Okay. I'll make sure that you said that. So when you, when you talk about, when you say things like Iran and DC decided, elaborate a little bit more on that because, you know, they don't really like, you know, Tehran is not meeting with DC inside Iraq. So what do you mean by that? And I know what you mean. You mean like, there's influence within Iraqi parties, you know, from Iran. And then there is a pushback from the US on, you know, for Iraqi or for Iranian influence in Iraq. So I would like for the average American to understand what you mean when you say that, you know, DC and, you know, Tehran decided that this person might not be suitable to rule Iraq. So the Tehran is controlling lots of parties in Iraq and political parties. Tehran is controlling the smallest positions inside a government institution. Everything is connected somehow to Tehran eventually. The budget, the gas, like for example, we can't, we can produce gas now in Iraq, because Tehran is preventing that because we buy gas from them. And this is the only way for them to get to get the US dollars, because they are now on sanctions. For example, we can't produce, we can't work, establish factories, because Tehran is depending on selling merchandise to Iraqis. And this is the only way to get the US dollars from Iraq. And they are not allowing us to establish to establishing factories. How would they make sure of that happens? They bring some people to the ministry of Sana'a Mahad and the ministry of... I don't even know what to call that in infrastructure, let's call it infrastructure. Yeah, infrastructure. They make sure someone is loyal to them and when he's corrupt in the same time. And when he tries, when you go to him and ask him, why don't you build factories, he say, well, yes, we can't do that, delay, delay, delay. And they will never build factories. So you're saying that there is those parties that were kind of brought in, you know, by the US, actually, after the war and Iraq, they were loyal to Iran. And you think that the US sanctions... Actually, Al-Maliki is a perfect example for that. Al-Maliki was a very close friend to the Americans. He was very close friend to Bush and they thought he's the guy who can trust to take over Iraq. And then after the American withdrawal, he openly started to support militias. He openly started to support Iran and he openly became sectarian. That's why people of provinces, some provinces in Iraq, they felt that there was something wrong with him. Why is he doing that now? He destroyed the Sahwa, he destroyed the Sunni politicians and he started to use sectarian accent with the people. And he escalated a lot. And that's when almost we got sectarian war in 2014 because of Al-Maliki. Every party who was close to the US became close to Iran. And because they thought that, okay, the Americans left now, we have only Tahran. So we need to stay with Iran. And we need to be loyal to Iran. And that's what they've done to make sure that they keep their positions. So you think there was a misjudgment from the Americans for bringing these parties in the first place to Iraq to the electoral process? Yes. Starting from Ahmad al-Cherabi, for example. Do you want to talk about him a little bit? So we have some contrast. They thought that Ahmad al-Cherabi has the support of the majority of Iraqis. When he comes, he will be just like Khomeini when he got to Tahran in 1979. To be honest, I think a thousand Iraqi from all the Iraqis in Iraq knew who Ahmad al-Cherabi was. No one knows Ahmad al-Cherabi. I didn't know who he was. No one knows who Ahmad al-Cherabi was. When he got there, okay, there is al-Cherabi factory for flour. Yeah. I mean, I've heard the name of a tribe, but that's like all I've heard of it. But I don't, that person had like no significance in Iraq. I want to go back a little bit to the part where you talked about Iran and how Iran has interest in Iraq not having, for example, producing its, or not having infrastructure or producing its own goods or even using its own oil. And you talked about how the U.S. dollars, because there are sanctions on Iran, Iran has interest in keeping Iraq in a way unstable because it relies on a supply from Iraq for the U.S. dollar. Will you talk about that a little bit more? So Iran is, I would say 70% is dependent, they're dependent on getting the U.S. dollars from the Iraqis, from Iraq government. There are several ways of that. One of them is selling gas to the Iraqi government. One of them is that they sell everything to Iraq, from matches to cars. It's like Iraq's China. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The same thing. Iraq is 40 million, almost 40 million person. No one knows, but I would say 40 million. And most of the public budget is comes from selling oil. 95% of the public budget comes from selling oil to the world. And then we get the dollars from the U.S. banks. So the only way for Tehran, the only way that Tehran survived the sanctions was through Iraq, through selling gas to Iraq, through selling merchandise, and through also trafficking and through, sorry, Tehrib. Yeah. You trafficking? Yeah. Smuggling. Smuggling. Yes. Smuggling and selling drugs to Iraq and everything. So this is the way that how they survive the sanctions and how they stayed the whole time without being affected very much by the sanctions. Because Iraq, they call it in Iraqi and in Iraqi language, they say that Iraq is the lung for the Iranians in the economy section. That's because the U.S. government giving the Iraqis dollars. We're allies with the U.S. And the Iraqis giving away the dollars to the Iranians. That's how, and the U.S. knows, everyone knows, but no one is doing anything about it. And we're still there stuck with no ability to have fish farms, with no ability to have corn, for example. Because everything is almost banned from the Iranians. You want to get flour, sorry, you want to get potato, you have to get it from Iran. So it's not allowed for you as Iraqi to plant so much potato that covers all the Iraqi region of the Iraqi country. It allows you to plant some. So the regulations, not on agriculture and Iraq? There's regulation by the Iranians on almost everything. You can't produce anything. How is that? Are you talking about through influence through the party? Through influence and through militias. And through, like for example, two years ago, one year ago, Iraq almost had enough supplies of wheat. And the Minister of Agriculture went on TV and he said, we will cover the all Iraq needs of wheat. Two days later, most of the wheat farms in Iraq burned. No one knows how, no one knows why. And you can see farmers crying because they lost almost everything they got. And then we imported wheat, guess from where? Iran? Yeah, okay. That's exactly what's happened. That was a hard question, but I think I got it. Yeah. And fish, for example, you can't raise fish inside farms in Iraq in a big amount because once you do that, suddenly you will find the fish floating and dying. You don't know how, you don't know why. So why do you think Iran has such strong influence within Iraq? And I know, I know this like argument with like, like, there's Shia and then Iraq is majority Shia. It's not about that. Yeah, because Iraq, I think people don't understand that Iraq and Iran, what's the, what's the percentage of Shia and Iraq? Like 70, but it's above 70, right? No one, no one can tell you. But it's above 50. I can't say. Okay, that's fine. But I'll find the numbers. I think it's 78 or I'll check this, but it's a majority Shia country that went to war for eight years with Iran. 350,000 Iraqis were killed. Yes. And like, you can't say that their eye lied because who fought the war? Like it's the Shia and Iraq must have fought the, you know, the Shia and Iran. So I guess my question is that I, like I grew up in Basra as a majority Shia, you know, city and I don't think people around me had any loyalty to Iran. Like we're, I think most of Iraqis have like very strong like alliance to Iraq. But I do agree with you that these parties have very strong alliance to Iran from like, whatever experience, what I continue to see on TV. So where does that come from? It comes from the militias. But why are these militias have such strong influence in our, and inside Iraq when Iraqis don't really, if you're a mafia leader and you have mafia members with you and you want to get money and control and power and you get a country like Iran support you and you are in another country like Iraq. And this country supports you like the whole thing, whatever you need, this country will provide for you. You need intelligence, information, you need arms, you need guns, you need boats, you need tanks, they will provide that for you. Then you will have to be loyal to them. And then they use religion and sect to, to make it a little bit more, you know, legal, not legal, how to say, Sharia. Yeah, legal, that's illegal. So these militia members, all of them were, they're nothing. Eventually they're nothing. They're not like doctors or they're not inventors. They're just gang members. And they found, they found country to support them. Why wouldn't they go? And they're applying everything that Iran wants. So there is, there is interest between the both sides. And these militias are the biggest risk for Iraqis now. It's biggest risk that I believe these militias are protecting the corrupt parties. If you remove the militias from the equation in Iraq, you will have parties very easily to, to remove or to bring to justice. For example, one of the militia leaders was captured by the Iraqi government five or six months ago. That's a very interesting, I thought would have been, like I've never heard like somebody is captured by Iraq. That's, that's an interesting statement. It's usually a militia captured somebody in the Iraqi government or executing. Yeah. Okay. So the Iraq government captured some of the, one of the militia leaders. His name is Qasem Musleh because there was a, there was a lawsuit, lawsuit against him saying that he's a terrorist and he killed one, two, three and he, there is confession and everything is like the case closed. So they captured him. The militias infiltrated the green zone. They threatened the government. They threatened the prime minister and they threatened, and they got also political parties, big political leaders in Iraq supporting them and they pressured the government and then they released him because they can't do that. It's bigger than the government. The government and the Iraqi army, security forces need the support of the community, international community to stand against these militias if they want that. Okay. No, here's my question for you. Do you think Iraq, do you think the US freed Iraq or do you think, you know, the oppression of one person has been like switched to the oppression of militias inside Iraq? So we had one, you know, if you're a pro or against Saddam or whatever, that's, that's in the past. But do you think the, that the US made the problem in Iraq worse by importing militias to rule Iraq that you ended up from having one dictator to hundreds of militias. And in my opinion, that's more localized and that's scarier because these people have local knowledge into being able to target actual individuals that can identify and find people much quicker than a dictator can in the past. So speak a little bit about that. How is, how is the problem in Iraq has gotten worse for Iraqis? I can't add more than you said. But in Iraq, we have this saying, they say, before Saddam, we have one Saddam. Now we have a thousand Saddam. We had one Odei. Now we had thousands of Odeis. There is lots of sons of politicians and militia leaders who are acting like Odei and worse. We have dictators now everywhere. Every corner in Iraq, there is a small dictator. This dictator control this. And whoever says anything about him, he would be killed publicly. And no one will talk about it. And the government will be like, yeah, okay, it's just a criminal thing and we can't do anything about it. So Iraqis didn't ask for democracy at 2003. Iraqis didn't ask for the American coalition forces and the American and the coalition forces to come invade Iraq and remove Saddam. I believe Iraqis would have done that later on. But with this kind of changing the regime, that was a huge mistake. And then they brought even worse people on us. So the problem is it's not fixed. It's got bigger than it was. When you ask Iraqis, they say, at least we got security at that time. At least we got some kind of dignity. Now anyone with a black suit and a black mask can break into my house and take me and kill my family. That's why I can't step inside Iraq since 2010. I left 2011 and until now, just because I make jokes on TV, just because I laugh of what they're doing wrong. If that was 10% democracy, I would be in Iraq and say whatever I want to say. So it's just a big play, a big game they're playing. And everyone is part of this game. And everyone knows that. That's why Iraqis are not participating in the next elections. Yeah, talk about how Iraqis by-coded the elections. Because I know in the US, we had the elections that just passed and the theme was it was vote on both sides. It was like, I've never seen the word vote as many times I've seen it in last of the year. How is that different in Iraq? Because there's a different message. People here trust the system or trust the voting procedures, let's say. That's why they want to vote. So if I go to vote and I know that my parliament member won't be able to do anything because there's militias, there's guns, there's corrupt corrupt politicians also. Why would I vote to send my candidate inside the parliament? And I know later on, even he will be threatened by the militias, or be killed by the militias, or be corrupted by the money of the corrupt parties, or he will be in exile just like, for example, we voted for two, not me. We voted for two parliament members. Fayeq al-Sheikh Ali, for example, and Basim Khoshan. Fayeq al-Sheikh Ali, in the middle of the term, he left. He said, I can't do anything anymore. I did everything. And I said everything and I'm leaving. This system is not flexible. Basim Khoshan won the election. He was the highest person who gets votes in his province. They didn't allow him to go inside the parliament. And until this moment since 2018, he can't step in the parliament because the political elite, they don't accept him. They say this guy is dangerous. If he comes inside, he will expose us. Although he won the elections, because I'm sure they tried to bribe him, tried to threaten him, and that didn't work for them. And I'm not saying that he's great. I'm just saying that it's an example. And he's not a parliament member until this moment, although he won the elections. So why would I be part of this? Iraqis are thinking like this. Why would we be part of this game they call elections? It's a game. It's nothing we can do. I always say that it's their game. It's their election. It's their ministries. It's theirs. It's not us, not the Iraqi people. It's a dictatorship. We have to confess this is a different kind of dictatorship where we can't do anything about it and we can't fix it with democracy. So I just need the world to understand this is not a democracy. What happens in Iraq is not a democracy. You can call it anything but definitely not a democracy. And this is a different scene from 2005 because people are choosing not to go vote this year. Well, in 2005, people were getting bombed at elections. And they went. Yeah. And they went. I remember there was an election center by my house that got bombed and the people died and they cleaned up and then they opened again and then people went to vote. They lined up like nothing happened. They sacrificed to go to the elections at the beginning. 2005, 2010. Then 2014 goes down 2018. 18% of Iraqis went to the elections. And this 18% are the people who are supported by the parties or supporting the parties who have interest with the parties, you know, because there are 7 million employees in Iraq and there are lots of people who work for the parties and work for the government and militias. So these 18% are the people who got interest from the parties. Majority of Iraqis, they didn't vote. Although I was encouraging Iraqis to go to the elections in 2018. And I believe that these elections if Iraqis went to vote, it would be some kind of change because the prime minister was a little bit different. Now I totally believe there's no point. Why we're doing these elections? They're going to stay the same. They will just change the prime minister to someone else. So what do you think the future holds for Iraq? How are we going to move beyond this? You can't have just 18% of people showing up for elections. I'm assuming the next cycle might be worse. I think you see it will be less. It'll be less. Okay, so what's the way forward for Iraqis? Where do you see them in terms of achieving some sort of representation in the government? The majority of Iraqis now understand what the political system is. The majority knows that this is not what they want. The majority, especially the new generation, the young people, understands that if they want to change, they have to create their own parties and they have to go through real democracy. They always say that we need the support of the international community to do that. For example, on 2019, on the protests, they launched a hashtag, says save the Iraqi people. They wanted the world to see what this system is. Who are they? The Iraqis. So they are just organizations inside Iraq? No, no, just people. Protesters, people all around the world. All these people wanted the international community to pressure on the government, to start the pressure on the government and the political elite to provide real democracy for them. But the world did nothing because since the oil is being delivered to the tanks, they don't care. Do you think the U.S. presence in Iraq makes this any worse or better? What do you think about the current U.S. presence in Iraq? There are no combat forces anymore. There are training forces in Iraq. To be honest, that's the last problem that we talk about in Iraq. Only militias are talking about the U.S. presence because they want to take over the country once the Americans are leaving. So lots of Iraqis think, lots of Iraqis that I meet think that the bases of the Americans, it's okay, let them stay. There's lots of countries with the American bases. Don't you think though that the bases in Iraq are different though because they are specifically training Iraqi forces. They're involved in the Iraqi government, which is a little bit different than just having a base like let's say in Qatar or whatever. Do you think having a base like having U.S. bases inside Iraq might give the sense that Iraq is not sovereign and then it's somehow feeding all these other countries to be involved by influencing if the U.S. can do it, why can't Iran do it? And if Iran do it, why U.S. can do it? That's what I'm trying to say. Do you think but Iran didn't have that much influence in Iraq until Iran didn't have a lot of influence in Iraq, until the U.S. you know, invaded Iraq, right? So the U.S. invasion to Iraq. That's why lots of Iraqis says Iran and the U.S. are agreed to destroy Iraq. I'm sure you've heard that. I mean, I don't know if I agree or disagree, but I've heard that, yeah, for sure. But I don't know if what I'm trying to say is do you think the U.S. presence in Iraq makes the problem worse by saying, yes, well, if the U.S. does it, why can't Iran does it? Well, if Iran does it, why can't the U.S. does it? And in that we're just saying that Iraq is not sovereign. It's like these entities have to somehow intervene to make it a country because the Iraqi people are not. I would say that when we don't have militias, when there is no militias that's supported by Iran. How do you think we can get rid of the militias? I think this is the task for the Iraqi government. The Iraqi government should be supported by the international community and then they get rid of militias just like what happened in 2008. But I feel like the Iraqi government has been supported by the international community, but the current government itself is corrupt. So how do you make sure that the government is not corrupt? Because the international community right now is supporting a corrupt government, right? There will be not a single government. So you're saying there will be a change. If the militias are gone, then there will be a proper government. You're not talking about the current government. You're hoping for a better government. Yes. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. But the problem is these militias will decide who are going to be the next government. So you'll never have a better government. So what do you think will happen? So maybe one government comes, for example, this government now, the international community pressured them to take steps to get rid of militias somehow. I don't know how. Bride them, put them in jails. It's not my problem. It's not my task. It's not me to change, to decide how. And then you will have maybe a country. What do the Iraqi people really want? What they wanted when they went on the streets in 2019. What did they want? They said, we want a country. We want a homeland. Homeland is the big umbrella, which concluded everything, concluded dignity, freedom, democracy, a future, a country where we can put our foot in and we can stay here and we know what's going to happen tomorrow. When I open a small business, I know what's going to happen. When I open a restaurant, I want to be worried from the militias to come to be my partner. When there is something wrong, I go to the court to comply against someone and then he goes to jail according to the law. The homeland means everything. That's why they went on the streets to tell the world, not the Iraqis, to tell the world that we want a homeland because they had enough with what's happening with this political elite. And that protest was against the Iraqi government and the Iraqi political elite, yes. But it was a message for the world. That's why they tried to send these peaceful messages to the world, telling them that we are getting killed and we're dying here by the government and the militias. And we're doing nothing in return because we want you to see us that we are not Ba'athis. We are not militias. We don't hate the world. We love them. We want to live peacefully. That's why we're dying and we're doing nothing in return. They were painting the walls. There was graffiti all around Tehri Square. They were singing. They were dancing. They wanted the world to see them as human beings. They wanted them to see that these people just are looking for a good life. How can we help them to have a better life? And if that wouldn't happen in the future, I would say there will be millions of Iraqis who will be desperate of Iraq and then they will find hope somewhere else. They will definitely go everywhere in the world. So we will have maybe a big wave of immigration in the next few years if they couldn't find a solution for Iraq. That's why it's very big responsibility for the international community. I'm going to come back to this in a little bit, but there's this image of Iraq that's not a reality of what Iraqis are because I think the world looks at Iraq as these Sunnis, Shia and the Kurds and they're fighting with each other because they want Shia and want the role and the Sunnis are the minority now. We have to grant their rights and I don't think the average Iraqi cares. Do you think Iraq is divided? Iraqi people? 2006, yes, they were. Now, no. They understood they knew what the game is. They knew that these political elites just keep dividing them to stay in power. They are doing that. They're covered. They're hiding behind their sects and religion just to stay in power forever. So they understood that game. That's why when they want on Tahir Square and the other major squares in the major cities, they were out there to say that we are Sunnis and Shias and we are one. There's no difference. We just need a homeland. We want a government that treats us all like a citizen from the first degree. I agree with you with that. I think even right after the war, I think there was some sort of organized civil war in a way because the war ended in 2003. And we didn't have a civil war until 2005. We hate 2006. Yeah, end of 2005, early 2000s. It was right after the elections. February 2006. Yeah, so things started to get worse though and around November 2005. I don't know if... Yeah, it was somewhere. But Iraqis were pushing that away. Yeah, but like for two years, two plus years, we... Because the Americans, when they come, they divided... Sectarianism. Sectarianism. They divided people. So people suddenly started to realize like, I'm not Iraqi. Oh, I'm Shia. Oh, wait, I'm Sunni. I didn't know that. I know, oh, they're defending me because he's Sunni. They realized then they were like, what's happening? We're both Iraqis. Why are we killing each other? Then they stopped one year after. They didn't take very long time. Yeah, I mean, it was interesting to me to see that unfold and to come here and hear that too. I honestly didn't know what Sunnis and Shia were until I was like, think on the eighth grade or something. It was mentioned one time that somebody celebrates a holiday and somebody doesn't. And I was like, wait, it wasn't... It was definitely not like a ritual. Yeah, it was like with people celebrated Christmas and like, at least... There was some Christian students with us in the school. Yeah. And we thought how lucky he is because he skipped Islamic school. Yeah, so I remember I had the same thing. We see like there was one Christian class and then I know that we studied the Islamic... We studied the Qur'an and they didn't have to and they skipped a whole class. Yeah. And I know we used to see... Oh, you're lucky. Yes, yeah. They're playing and running around and like you're sitting down taking an extra class. Yeah, and I remember that. Like I remember that one girl was like, ah, she gets that class off because she's Christian. Yeah. Yeah, but what's Christian means? He's my friend and I lost contact with him. But he's my friend. Yeah. And when Basra, we had Sabians too. Like we... In Basra, there was diversity, like a lot of diversity. Yeah. Now where is it? I don't know. I haven't been... I left Basra one day. No, no, no. There are no Christians. There are no Subba. Sabians, yeah. Sabians. There are almost everyone left. Yeah. That's, you know, I need to look into more of what's going on in Basra, but I haven't been... That's not fun. The same guy who... Now, for example, in these elections, the same guy who was responsible for what happened in Basra in 2007, Yusuf Snawi, is now a candidate for these elections. And he's a party. He has a party, God's Revenge Party. The name of the party, it's God's Revenge. Okay. So can you imagine how peaceful is that? Like you want to go, you want to create a political system with a party called God's Revenge. That's good. I mean... What are you doing? I mean, if you're going to have revenge, might as well be God's, you know, at this point. So I'm going to give you an opportunity to say... I do want to touch back one more question that I have when you talk about the... You wanted the... I am skeptical of any help that comes to Iraq from the outside. And I feel like I'm justified to feel that way. And I feel like, you know, we need to be left alone more than, you know, helped. I feel like we have a lot of people helping us right now. And the reason why we're in this place in the first place is because we were helped to, like, either achieve freedom... That wasn't helped. That's what I'm trying to say, but you're asking for more. No, no, that was... At 2003, that wasn't helped. But how do you know this one is going to be different, though? It's like grabbing someone and saying, you have a headache. I think you'll be better now. That's fine. I completely agree. But what I'm asking you is, how do you know that this time, the help... Because we are not asking the American, the International Committee to invade. No, it's not like that. Okay. When that happens, we will stand against it. We don't want any foreigners to be on Iraqis. We want them to be as tourists. We want them to come as tourists, as friends, as workshops, wherever. We exchange everything. We want them, since this is their responsibility, this is what happens in Iraq now, is in their necks in Iraq. We say that. They have to take their responsibility. Their responsibility is to create real democracy for Iraq. Who are they? The Americans. You want the British. Okay. The people who invaded Iraq, especially the American and the British. You don't think that the best option for them right now to just leave because it doesn't seem like they helped at all? No, because now they broke the door and they are leaving now and everyone will come. Okay. So it's very risky now. They have to stay at the door and make sure that this door is built very well and then they leave. Okay. On that, we might have to disagree on that one, which is fine because I have a feeling that that door is going to be broken. If there's somebody to fix that door, I don't think like looking at the last, has it been 18 years? It has not been fixed. I feel like the door is going to have to like get online with electricity. But when they left at 2010 and you've seen the result. Yeah, no, I don't disagree with you. If they left now, I would say militias will take over and you will see Taliban and new Taliban in Iraq. But now it will be the militias. But they can't stay in forever. No. Okay. I mean, there are bases everywhere in the world. Okay. And these bases somehow to, we don't want them to stay forever. Yeah, for sure. But we want them to make sure that what they came to achieve that they have to achieve. Thank you so much for speaking to me. Thank you so much for talking to me. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.