In this week's episode of Dateline, former Iraqi film student Fouad Hady films in the well-to-do Baghdad suburb of Karrada, near the Green Zone. It houses many diplomats and politicians, making it a target for insurgents. Fouad doesn’t dare leave the house without his brother, a policeman, and two bodyguards for protection.

The people he films painfully demonstrate what life is now like for ordinary Iraqis:

• A street vendor who was seriously injured by the US bombing campaign in 2003 but is yet to receive compensation. “If you go out in the morning you don’t know if you will return in the afternoon. It’s very miserable.”

• The generator repair man who won’t charge for his services. “People sell their household furniture to pay for the generators or they live in the dark with their kids. I don’t have the heart to charge them so I fix it for free. God will compensate me.”

• The man who lost nine family members when a suicide bomber attacked a wake, and was then robbed while he lay injured. “Then they put me in a truck and started piling injured people and corpses on me. I almost suffocated.”

• The mother who mourns her son, an Iraqi solider, who was killed when the US army fired on his vehicle. “They came to save Iraq but the killing – intentional and unintentional – is going on.”

Fouad's story is a disturbing but powerful social history of a suburb that was once affluent and peaceful, but now knows nothing but constant power cuts, precious little running water and the continuous threat of insurgent attack.

About International Dateline 

SBS Dateline, which began in 1984, is Australia's longest-running international current affairs program. It has a well-earned reputation for authoritative and incisive reporting. Dateline has taken the traditional way of producing TV current affairs and turned it on its head. Reporters who used to travel with a cameraperson and sound recordist now travel alone and have the responsibility of both filming and reporting their stories. The reporters became video-journalists, gaining access to people and places that the conventional camera crews cannot.