STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
I want people to know, if they don't, that this is Leila's first time back in our studios since traveling to the Middle East. Leila, welcome back.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Thank you.
INSKEEP: And we listened to your coverage - it was great - from Iraq on the border with Iran.
FADEL: Thank you.
INSKEEP: All the airports are closed. How do you get there?
FADEL: Yeah. I mean, I think that's one sign of how widespread this war is being felt in the region. The airspace is closed over Baghdad. It's closed over Erbil, where I ended up. And so I had to fly to Turkey, to Istanbul, fly to a smaller town of - Turkish town closer to the border with the Kurdistan region of Iraq, then drive across the border and ended up driving out. And that takes quite a long time, especially coming out, because so many people are trying to leave. It took me just six hours at the border point to get out.
INSKEEP: Yeah. Yeah. And is the war where you were in Iraq?
FADEL: Yeah. I mean, the thing is that this war is being felt in every corner of the region, but very differently. And so in Iraq, the way you're feeling it is there are Iranian-aligned paramilitary groups that are connected to the Iraqi government inside Iraq.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
FADEL: Those groups are attacking U.S. assets in the region and also in Kurdistan - in the Kurdistan...
INSKEEP: And by assets...
FADEL: ...Region of Iraq.
INSKEEP: ...We mean U.S. troops are there...
FADEL: We're talking about...
INSKEEP: ...At bases.
FADEL: ...The U.S. bases that are still there. We're talking about hotels where they're saying there's U.S. military intelligence. So we were thinking about - where are we going to stay so we don't get targeted? The U.S. embassy has been attacked a couple times at this point, and in response, the U.S. is striking. And they're not just striking military targets, actually. Right before I left, they hit residential neighborhoods to target leadership in those paramilitary...
INSKEEP: Is it...
FADEL: ...Groups.
INSKEEP: ...Like, drone strikes or other kinds of strikes?
FADEL: There were airstrikes on Karrada, which is a central, residential, upscale neighborhood of Baghdad. And the U.S. was striking these Iranian-aligned Iraqi paramilitary groups, and reportedly in Mosul as well, because I was going out to meet that paramilitary and they told me, don't come, after they had been struck.
INSKEEP: So you're reminding me this really is a regional war.
FADEL: Yes.
INSKEEP: You spent most of your time, I know, in the Kurdish region near the border with Iran, and this is a region that historically has been very friendly to Americans. They love Americans there. How are they feeling about America now?
FADEL: Yeah. And they also have a very important and strategic relationship with Iran because they have this long...
INSKEEP: It's right there.
FADEL: ...Border with...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
FADEL: ...Iran. So they've got this delicate balance - very friendly with the U.S., but also a relationship with Iran. One Kurdish party, which has more control along that border, has a more important relationship with Iran, the other Kurdish party more with Turkey, because that border is more important in the region that they largely control. And there is this anger that the Kurds feel kind of used. There was all this - these headlines about the U.S. maybe training up Iranian Kurdish groups that are based in Iraqi Kurdistan, and so the Kurds feeling like, wait a second - you can't endanger everything we've built here. This is a place that has fully built up. There's hotels. There's construction. There's oil infrastructure. They don't want to put that all at risk for a war that's not theirs on the border. And so that's what we were hearing in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
INSKEEP: So they got questions about what the United States is doing. Let me ask about another level of this. I want people to know that you spent many years reporting in Iraq...
FADEL: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...During the aftermath of another U.S.-led regime change...
FADEL: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...In 2003. What was it like to return to that country?
FADEL: I had been wanting to go back for years now because I had always covered it in the aftermath of regime change that was extremely bloody. For Iraqis, living was a gamble. Every day they were waking up to insurgent bombings they might be next to. People were being threatened if they worked with any type of U.S. companies. And I remember people that worked with me that had bullets left on their door by Sunni insurgent groups who didn't want them working with us.
There were - there was part of the population that really didn't want that regime change. And it ended up being a bloody sectarian civil war because Kurds and Shia Arab Iraqis really benefited much more from the U.S. war than Sunni Arabs did. And so that became this war over power. Shia militias were torturing and killing Sunni Arabs just on identity, and vice versa. So it was this war over power that really hurt civilians. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Thousands of Americans were killed. And 23 years later, it had somewhat stabilized. The government's beset with corruption. It is heavily influenced by Iran. That battle between the U.S. and Iran really was in Iraq. And now it feels like Iraqis, who finally were in a place where they could live, are seeing that their country might be pulled back into that place because of a direct U.S.-Iran-Israel war next door.
INSKEEP: Wow. They are fearing living it all over again.
FADEL: Yes. They're fearing living it all over again because it's so fresh. And the different parties - I mean, Iraq is an extremely diverse place - Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Turkmen - I mean, there's other minorities there as well - Yazidis. And that has always been a situation in which, because there is so much outside influence, a lot of times these groups get pitted against each other or are pitted against each other internally. And so the fear among Iraqis is that they will go back to this place of killing each other. And that's not just in Iraq. That's something people fear in Lebanon, which also has a very diverse population, and a fear in Iran, which has an incredibly diverse population.
INSKEEP: At a dark time like this, it's hard to say, but I've heard the case made that there have been signs of hope in Iraq, in that after the devastation of war, another period came. The blast walls came down. The...
FADEL: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...Economy had improved.
FADEL: Well, that's...
INSKEEP: Things can work.
FADEL: ...What I had hoped I was going to go to Iraq to explore. This place, 23 years later - like, is this experiment, this democratic experiment, working out? And it's something I didn't get to explore because we were back in a place where there are drone strikes and airstrikes and fighting again. And you could feel that pain that this might be returning among people, because they want to build forward. And the biggest question is, where does this go? Is there even a plan here? And that was the question around the Iraq war, too, if you remember. And there's a bigger - even bigger question here because it kind of came out of nowhere for people, and yet the entire region is being pulled in.
INSKEEP: Leila, thanks for your reporting, and welcome back.
FADEL: Thank you. Thanks. It's good to be back in the studio with you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SYLVAIN CHAUVEAU'S "DES PLUMES DANS LA TETE (VARIATION 2)")
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