The Devil You Don't Know: Going Back to Iraq - Softcover

'Saddam Hussein's dictatorship drove many of the best and brightest out of Iraq into what must have seemed and bleak and endless exile. There have been accounts from those Iraqi politicians who returned to the country immediately after the end of the invasion in 2003 but they have dwelled on their own ambitions and visions. Apart from that there have been very few authentic Iraqi voices who have been able to speak of the brutal world during the Saddam years and the bloody chaotic ones that have followed his demise. The Devil You Don't Know fills that void and counters the avalanche of books by westerners about Iraq seen from the point of view of western journalists, diplomats and soldiers. Many others have written of the looting of Baghdad when the city fell to US forces, the beginning of the occupation, but what makes it seem so vital and new is that you read and relive these events through the voice of an Iraqi to whose city and country this is being done. It still seems amazing that after hundreds of millions of words, pictures and inteviews about Iraq over the last 6 years, it still seems a distant war and a conflict which we in the west struggle to understand. The reason is because with each and every year, westerners reporting Iraq have become more and more isolated from Iraqis because of the dangers, because of the suspicions. What really comes through and is startlingly refreshing are Al Jezairy's encounters with ordinary Iraqis in the years during the American occupation. Through them come all the extraordinary Iraqi stories and lives that have been so hard for westerners to capture for all these years.' --Rageh Omaar

In 1979, journalist Zuhair al-Jezairy fled Iraq and certain death after openly criticising Saddam's regime. Twenty-five years later he is back, and cautiously celebrating the toppling of the hated Ba'ath Party. As editor of a newspaper, he breaks the Oil for Food scandal, disclosing the names of Arab and Westerners who were involved. He then sets up a television company and travels all over Iraq, documenting the country's descent into sectarianism and hopeless violence, soon becoming a target himself. Al-Jezairy's first-hand accounts of the looting of Baghdad, the destruction of government buildings, and indiscriminate bombings are a searing, personal and unique account of Iraq after Saddam Hussein.