Embedded in Iraq: Friend or foe?

Our special report reveals the tensions in Baghdad as Iraqi soldiers draw guns on US troops while on joint patrol.

Watch the report

Baghdad is in its third week of a major operation by joint US and Iraq forces to reduce the sectarian violence in the city.

This "surge" on Baghdad includes increased checkpoints and troop numbers on the streets. But outside the heavily fortified Green zone the city is effectively divided into districts along sectarian lines.

The Shia dominate the east with a couple of isolated enclaves west of the Tigris. The rest of the west is dominated by Sunnis

In the first of a series of reports our foreign affairs correspondent Nick Paton Walsh and cameraman/producer Tim Lambon, embedded with the US military, accompanied a patrol of the Twelfth Cavalry to the Shura district - a Shia stronghold in the north-west of Baghdad.

Their report captures vividly the day-to-day reality of the sectarian schism in the troubled city as US forces have to protect Sunnis from brutality and possibly even execution at the hands of Shia police.

Most tellingly, we see Iraqi soldiers drawing their guns against the US troops with whom they are on joint patrol, sparked by the Iraqis wishing to deal with the suspects they arrest in a manner which alarms the Americans.

It is a dramatic insight into the sectarian tensions within Iraq, which threatens to turn the security forces into just another armed faction and capture the US forces in the middle.

Send this article by email

Recipient's email address

Your name