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It has been six years since the US led invasion of Iraq began.
Those years have brought both hope and joy as well as death, destruction and despair for many Iraqis.
Regardless of which angle you look at the country from, it is obvious that the people of Iraq have paid a heavy price for their so-called freedom during the last six years.
In a special series of films, Witness highlights some of the untold stories of the ordinary people trapped in the middle of the crisis.
The Iraq season recounts stories of pain and horror but also stories of courage and hope.
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Zahra, a Shia, and her husband, Ammar, a Sunni from Baghdad, were at home with their two children when a group of men knocked on their door in March 2005.
Ammar was forced at gunpoint into a car which disappeared at high speed.
Kidnapping is rife in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Official figures show that about 40 people were kidnapped every day during 2007.
Filmmaker Rashed Radwan follows Zahra as day after day, she visits police stations, hospitals and morgues in a desperate search for her husband, and in the face of disapproval from a society where widows are still expected to be invisible.
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Iraqi boxer Farouk Chanchoun Jawad was three-times Champion of Asia and finished joint-fifth in the Men's Light-Welterweight division at the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Today, Farouk trains youngsters in Baghdad's notourious Adhamiya neighbourhood. In recent years Adhamiya has become a battleground between US soldiers and Iraqi insurgents, as well as Sunni and Shia Iraqis. Each day Farouk must cross two US checkpoints just to reach his boxing academy.
Filmmaker Rashed Radwan brings us a film about getting young men to box instead of fight. It is also a compelling account of life in Baghdad's most dangerous district, seen through the eyes of its residents.
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Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is an award-winning photographer and journalist who grew up in Baghdad.
He began documenting life on the streets of Baghdad in 2001, and when the war started two years later he reported for The Guardian newspaper before the growing violence forced him to flee.
In this film Ghaith returns to the streets of a Baghdad now divided by security walls separating Sunni and Shia. Thousands of homeless roam the streets, children grow up hating Americans, improvised cemeteries house the thousands of dead and there is electricity for only three hours a day.
Ghaith's ability to move around the city despite the dangers, gives us a unique insight into this Baghdad and to a story so far untold.
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Farouk works on the Basra oil terminal in the Shatt Al-Arab waterway, surrounded by tankers and warships from the US, the UK and Australia. Their job is to guarantee the safety of shipping in the area and to protect Iraq's oil exports.
In April 2004 he was at his post when he heard a huge explosion at a neighbouring oil terminal. Coalition forces rushed towards the blast, leaving the Basra terminal undefended. Suddenly, Farouk noticed a small boat speeding directly towards the terminal - a suicide bomber heading straight for him.
Rashed Radwan's film is about the day a simple worker from an Iraqi village helped to prevent a massive economic and ecological disaster. It is a fascinating human story but also a rare glimpse into the lives of the men who keep Iraq's oil flowing.
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Watch part two
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The Mesopotamian Marshlands, in Southern Iraq at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, are thought by many to be the site of the Garden of Eden.
After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein began an aggressive drainage programme. It turned much of this abundant marshland into desert, and forced some 200,000 of its inhabitants to flee, many taking refuge in Iran.
Now, the water and its inhabitants are returning. But many things have changed forever.
Filmmaker Rashed Radwan went back in time, to witness a way of life that has remained unchanged for 5,000 years and the struggle of an old Sheikh against his own son, in an attempt to preserve their Garden of Eden.
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Watch part two
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The Guardian of Eden aired from Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 0830, 1900; Wednesday: 0330, 1400, 2330.
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