All language subtitles for Vice S05E13 Taking Back Iraq & Lost Generation

For over six months,
the fight against ISIS in Iraq

has been reaching
its tipping point,

with a massive operation to regain
control of the city of Mosul.

Three years ago,
US trained coalition forces

surrendered Iraq's second-largest
city to ISIS fighters,

and it's been the epicenter of the militant
group's operations in Iraq ever since.

To see what the battle against ISIS
looks like on the front lines,

we sent Aris Roussinos
to embed with Iraqi forces

as they began their assault on
ISIS's last stronghold in Iraq.

Dawn's breaking,
and the long-awaited offensive

to liberate Mosul
has just begun.

The Peshmerga
are pushing through the berm

that separates their territory
from that of ISIS.

The plan is to push ahead, liberate
a few villages on the road there.

The offensive continues
a grueling two-year campaign

by Iraqi and Kurdish troops

that stretched hundreds
of miles northwest

from the suburbs of Baghdad
to surround Mosul.

Fire!

As soon as
the offensive started,

ISIS sent suicide bombers
to target Iraqi forces,

and set oil reserves aflame in an attempt
to defend their hold on the city.

We followed along with the Iraqi
Army's 9th Armored Division,

as it assaulted ISIS-held
villages on their path.

The Iraqi Army have been held up at this
village for the past couple of days.

They were complaining about the lack
of air support from the coalition,

but since we've been here,
within in the past 10 minutes,

two Iraqi Air Force helicopters,
helicopter gunships, have come in,

and it's been hammering
the village with rockets.

But ISIS counterattacked,

exploding a mortar
just a few feet away from us

and striking a BMP vehicle with a
missile, killing one of its crew.

We're up at the forwardmost front-line position
facing ISIS on the road towards Mosul.

Get down!

The situation remained tense

as the unit faced
constant gunfire

and debated whether or not their
captive was an ISIS fighter.

One of the
soldiers blamed the prisoner

for the death of his friend,

and he was taken away for
interrogation, away from the cameras.

Despite the confident
tone and modern American weaponry,

the Iraqi Army appeared poorly
organized for the battle ahead.

As the Iraqi
Army pushed forward,

they began stabilizing
the retaken area.

Since we've been
here, the Iraqi armored units

have been able to take towns
and villages but not hold them.

They need an infantry
to do that.

Tasked with securing
the retaken town of Qaraqosh,

Colonel Omar Ali
allowed us to follow,

as the army took stock
of the destruction.

This is the... the main
church, the cathedral.

Prior to the ISIS takeover, this
church was the largest in Iraq,

summoning over 3,000 Christians
to mass every Sunday.

This is the altar of the cathedral.
You can see an icon there.

They've obviously replaced it in the
past few days since they recaptured it.

But while some were
celebrating their return home,

many more were still
fleeing the violence.

Colonel Ali and his troops
move north to Karemlash,

continuing their mission of securing
sites recaptured from ISIS.

ISIS dug a vast web
of interconnecting tunnels

to hide from air strikes
and surprise Iraqi forces,

a strategy that allowed them to hold
the region for as long as they did.

You can see they've actually got a
professional boring machine hidden away here

that ISIS have used to dig this
extensive network of tunnels

that crisscrosses
the entire front line.

It all looks quite chaotic,

but it's actually
deadly serious work.

We don't know
if the excavator is mined.

What's obvious when you see this is the
level of sophistication of these tunnels,

of the equipment ISIS are using.

The closer we get to Mosul, the more
sophisticated the tunnels will be

and the longer it will take
to clear them.

We just arrived in the recently recaptured
village of Ali Rash, just outside Mosul,

with one of the generals
commanding this division.

It's a bit of a press tour.
Most of the Iraqi TV crews

are being taken
on a kind of PR tour.

There's a few ISIS bodies
scattered around.

An Iraqi media officer
is leading Iraqi journalists

on a tour of ISIS corpses,

uh, rotting around the courtyard
of a school here.

We're now in the
suburbs of Mosul.

You can hear an exchange of
fire, incoming and outgoing.

Okay.

Uh, when... Man: Whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ah-ah-ah.

So, this is pretty much
the first house in Mosul

to be taken over
by the Iraqi Army.

The civilian inside has been
living here the whole time.

He doesn't want to be interviewed
because he says his family

still live just further on inside
what is still ISIS territory.

As troops closed in on the city,

it became clear that the situation
was more precarious than expected.

Districts they had claimed
to have liberated

were still vulnerable
to ISIS counterattacks.

It didn't take long until we found
ourselves in a similar situation.

We came under heavy ISIS fire
and we've basically

been trapped here
for the past few hours.

It's getting dark now,
our press trip to the front line

has basically gone wrong.
We're still trapped here.

The generals
are also trapped here,

uh, trying to work out how we're
going to get out, essentially.

It's not an ideal situation.

Ultimately, the generals decided to wait for
the cover of night to attempt to retreat.

We're making a mad dash
through the desert,

lights off,
bumper-to-bumper,

just trying
to not attract ISIS fire

as we crawl our way back to the
relative safety of Ali Rash.

On the road back, we came across
an encampment of Mosul residents,

fleeing the violence and desperate
for an end to the conflict.

Hundreds of thousands have been displaced
since the offensive began in October.

As coalition forces
make gains in liberating Mosul,

and pushing ISIS out of Iraq,

the looming question is,
"What will be left behind?"

The toll on the nation's decimated
infrastructure and weakened state

has ensured Iraq will remain
unstable for the foreseeable future.

The battle for Mosul

and the purging
of the Islamic State from Iraq,

brings up the question of what the
country will actually look like

fully liberated.

Now, Iraq has one of the youngest
populations of any country in the world,

with 50 percent
of Iraqis under 19.

That means that the majority of
the people living there today

have grown up
knowing nothing but war

and the chaos that followed the
ousting of Saddam Hussein.

This exact situation brought about the
growth of the Islamic State in Iraq

in the first place.

So we sent Isobel Yeung
to Baghdad

to find out what the future
looks like

for a lost generation
of young Iraqis.

What's it like to drive a bus
around Baghdad?

Did you go to school?

Sixteenyear-old Haider
works part-time as a bus driver,

even though he doesn't yet
have his license.

And you've been driving since you were 15?
No one's stopped you?

It sounds quite risky. What's the point?
Why are you still doing it?

Iraq's economy is in shambles.

When Haider isn't driving a bus,

he's doing what hundreds of
thousands of young Iraqi men

fighting.

For the last two years, Haider has
fought with a local Shia militia

against IS.

And he's about to head
back out to the front lines.

This is your room?

It's not what I imagined for
a fighter's room.

I love your little
Care Bears up here.

Do you miss it
when you're not here?

Have you ever killed someone?

Have you lost any friends?

Oh, this is
your friend who died?

How do you feel
looking at these photos?

Hmm.

Wow.

Oh, my God.
What's that?

Why do you like to take
photos of the heads?

Oh, my God.
That's pretty gruesome.

Why did you take this photo?

You don't mind your son having
these photos on his phone?

Do you feel like he's
missing out on anything

by going off to fight
at such a young age?

One of the country's
most tragic casualties

to the disruption of war

is the nation's once-thriving
education system.

Under the dictatorship
of Saddam,

schools were secular and free.

Primary school enrollment
was nearly a hundred percent.

But since the fighting began
in 2003,

there have been
tens of thousands

of education-related attacks,

forcing one out of
every five schools to close.

Over the last 15 years,
the city of Fallujah

has seen some of the worst
violence in Iraq.

We went there to see one of the
only schools that's been reopened

since the area was reclaimed
from Islamic State.

Iraq used to have
one of the best

education systems
in the Arab world,

and now over a third of the kids
in the country are out of school

and not receiving
any education at all.

This is actually one of the
more fortunate schools.

You can see, it's still
been pretty badly hit.

There are hundreds of students
studying here,

crammed into tiny
little classrooms.

The teachers are saying that they
don't have enough text books,

they don't have enough chairs
for the kids to sit on,

and then they haven't received any
government support or funding.

As more and more students show
up at what's left of the school,

the headmistress is scrambling to
accommodate as many as she can.

Is it good to be back at school?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

More than a million
school-age children

have been displaced since the
rise of the Islamic State.

How long have you been
at this school for?

Why did you have to leave
this town?

Even for the students
who are lucky enough

to get some form
of an education,

there are few opportunities
once they finish school.

For younger adults, the unemployment
rate is estimated at almost 40 percent.

Iraqi youth are so disillusioned
with the situation,

that thousands have taken
to the streets in protest.

In 2016, demonstrators stormed the
heavily guarded government green zone,

demanding reforms.

Months later, the protests in
Baghdad are still going on.

We're just in Tahrir Square,
where, for years now,

hundreds, if not thousands,
of protesters

have been showing up
every single Friday

to express their dissatisfaction

with corruption,
with lack of jobs,

with a million different
grievances

that young people
here in Iraq have.

Billions of dollars have
disappeared from Iraq's economy

due to corruption under Prime
Minister Nouri Al-Maliki,

who the US helped put in power.

Even now that Maliki's gone, the
economy is in worse shape than ever,

and corruption is still rampant.

To find out how top officials are
answering to these youth-led protests,

we met with Iraq's
minister of youth.

Every Friday still, hundreds of
protesters gather in Tahrir Square.

There's so much anger
amongst young people

towards politicians
like yourself.

Do you feel at all guilty that
you're sat here on this throne,

earning one of the best
salaries in the country?

What's at stake here
if the situation

doesn't turn around
for young people in Iraq?

What does the future
of the country look like?

But there are certain
groups who have something to gain

from the discontent
sweeping across Iraq.

Sectarian militias, divided across
religious and political lines,

are recruiting
at an alarming rate.

We went to one front line
with a Suni militia leader,

whose ranks are filled
with disenfranchised young men,

eager to join the fight
against ISIS.

What's happening?

Woo! Yeah.

Did that feel good?

Do you often shoot the river?

What were you doing before that?

What would you be doing
if you weren't fighting?

So you never went to school?

How much longer do you think
you'll be fighting for?

What do you think your country
will be like once ISIS has left?

Do you guys fight
with any Shia militia?

The sheikh doesn't agree?

Some of these
men are pretty young.

What were you doing
when you were their age?

Quite a different life to the
life that these young guys have.

You've only recently
recruited these men.

Was it easy to encourage
them to join up?

Once ISIS is eradicated, do
you think that that's it?

Or do you think that there might be more
tension between Shia and Sunni militias?

It would seem that
the stage is already set

for the next sectarian war,

once Islamic State is gone.

To make matters worse,

religious leaders on both sides
are escalating the call to war

amongst ever-younger
and impressionable kids.

In 2014, Shia religious
clerics issued fatwas

that made it a religious duty for
even children to take up arms.

We met with one of the clerics
responsible

in the Shia city of Najaf.

You yourself have issued a fatwa

to encourage young men
to go and fight.

Some of the people
who are going off to fight

are just boys.
I've seen some of them.

Do you think that they
can fully comprehend

the magnitude of what they're
getting themselves into?

You say it's easy for you,
but I also met the families

of young boys
who are heading out to fight,

and I don't think it would be
easy for them.

You are talking about young people
like they're almost disposable.

Is any age too young to go
and fight, do you think?

Do you have any sons?

Do they fight?

It's quite convenient, though, that you
are asking other people's children

to go and fight
and not asking your own.

While more and more discontented
youth pour into the militias,

the toll has already been
staggering.

Some estimate that more
than a million Iraqis

have been killed since 2003.

We're just in Najaf's cemetery,

which is one of the largest
cemeteries in the world.

Literally, as far as you can see,
it's just millions of graves.

Looking at these photos,
everyone is so young.

This whole area is cordoned off
for volunteers like Haider.

Several of his friends
are buried here.

We visited the grave
of Haider's friend, Alawi,

who was recently killed
in battle.

How old was he when he died?

How many of your friends
are buried here?

And how many more of your friends
do you think you'll be burying?

Do you ever wish that you
grew up somewhere else

and you didn't have to
go and fight in Iraq?