What is really going on in Iraq?

Hadani Ditmars and Dahr Jamail painted a nuanced portrait of daily life in Iraq [AFP]

On Tuesday Riz speaks with two independent journalists who went beyond the mainstream media accounts to paint a nuanced portrait of daily life in Iraq.

Hadani Ditmars is a Canadian journalist who has been travelling to Iraq for the past 10 years, reporting for The New York Times and other newspapers on the regime of Saddam Hussein, the former president, the effects of the UN sanctions, and most recently, the US invasion. She focuses on the effects of the war on Iraqi culture and society in her 2005 book, Dancing in the No-Fly Zone: A Woman’s Journey Through Iraq.

Dahr Jamail, an Iraqi-American mountain ranger, decided to leave his job in Alaska after the war and visit his homeland. He picked up a laptop computer and digital camera and began blogging, and eventually started writing for The Guardian, The Independent and The Nation. His just-released book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, exposes the humanitarian crisis developing in Iraq and the contradictions between most media reporting and the facts on the ground.

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This episode of Riz Khan aired on 16 October 2007