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Meeting Resistance |
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A film by Steve Connors and Molly Bingham
When Iraqi insurgents began attacking U.S. forces in the summer of 2003, it piqued the interest of veteran war photographers Steve Connors and Molly Bingham. The two spent the next ten months interviewing insurgents from the Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya to find out what was fueling the opposition. They soon discovered that the insurgents weren’t a ragtag group of criminals, extremists, and Hussein loyalists as the U.S. media portrayed them, but were a well-organized group of citizens from all walks of life who had one thing in common – they were fiercely opposed to the occupation.
“We didn’t go to expose lies,” Bingham said in a telephone interview that also included Connors. “We aren’t in opposition to the government. We didn’t know what we’d find.” Bingham said they set out to understand a community of people and wanted to convey that understanding to a broader audience.
According to Connors, eighty percent of the reporting that comes out of Iraq comes from the U.S. military. “Many are willing to accept what the military tells them,” Connors said. “In covering wars, you need to see the people you want to know about. If I want to know about the Chechens, I talk to the Chechens. If I want to know about the Russians, I talk to the Russians.” And when he wanted to know about the insurgents, he talked to the insurgents. “They are the only insurgency turning their guns on their support base,” Connors said. “It doesn’t make sense. You have to ask questions.”
In the newly released documentary Meeting Resistance, that’s exactly what Connors and Bingham do. They ask the insurgents questions, and let them tell their stories. Only one of the insurgents interviewed had been serving in the military when the U.S. invaded, and most had no prior military experience. One by one the insurgents talk about how they felt compelled to sign up with the resistance after seeing their country occupied. One man, who was dubbed The Traveler, talked about fighting alongside the Palestinians as a teen. “I fought for the liberation of one Arab land, and now my own country is occupied. How could I not fight to liberate it?” he asked. Another insurgent posited the following scenario: “Suppose Iraq invaded America, and an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don’t be surprised by their reactions. Their attitudes are normal.”
Connors and Bingham were invited to show Meeting Resistance to the military in Baghdad. While some of those who viewed the film denied that it reflected any kind of reality, Bingham said others reacted more along the lines of, “Wow! I never thought about what I’d do if America was invaded.”
What would we would do if we were invaded is one of the overarching questions the film brings up. Connors said that for him, another questions raised by the film is: If the Iraqis are fighting for self-determination and independence, then what does that make us in opposing them? “It’s a big question for individuals and a nation to face,” Conners said. “There’s a reluctance here to face that question.”
Along a similar line, Bingham said, “There is a self-reflection that is required when you understand who’s opposing us and what they’re fighting for. It brings up the question of why we’re there, what it says about us, and how we live with that.”
As far as the question of why we’re in Iraq, Bingham said that is not a deep topic of conversation among the Iraqis. “They don’t care why,” Bingham said. “All they care is that they’re no longer making decisions for their country. Someone else is making the decisions and it’s often at the point of a gun.”
Bingham said that for her, the making of the film has called into question what it means to be an American and what it says about the values Americans are raised to believe in. “It’s a profound challenge to my belief structure,” Bingham said. “I’m interested in finding a way to maintain the values I was raised to believe in as an American. And if those are pure mythology, what does that mean? What is an appropriate action on my part as a citizen when I see those values eroded?”
When asked how the making of the documentary had changed him, Connors said he now questions everything he ever learned about history. “If the world media got this so wrong, what else in our history have they gotten wrong?” he asked. He said he now questions whether Iraq was really as fragmented before the U.S. invasion as we were led to believe. “If it wasn’t, then how did it become so fragmented in the last two to three years? I always end up with the same answer – this occupation is a problem. It’s the imposition of a completely alien political and cultural system on a country that doesn’t want it. And the more we cram it down their throats, the more they’ll resist.”
Reviewed by Shawna Galassi
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