"When Dorothy Martin and her husband Alan meet the wealthy Ahmad family, they are charmed by their courtesy, their perfect English, their delightful children and their commitment to peace. Following a concert at Sherebury Cathedral, the Ahmads offer to host a party afterwards at the Rose and Crown pub. But Mr and Mrs Ahmad don't show up. Their children are asleep upstairs at the inn, but the parents are nowhere to be found . . . With suspicions of...

In February 2002 - about a year before the U.S. invasion - Iraqi filmmaker Abbas Fahdel traveled home from France to capture everyday life as his country prepared for war. No strangers to war, the Iraqis thought they understood what was coming, and could even manage to be grimly humorous about what they felt would likely be a major and lengthy inconvenience. And then, the war began. When Fahdel resumed filming in 2003, two weeks after the invasion,...

The enduring story of the battle of Fallujah, told by the people who lived through it. Twenty years after the invasion of Iraq, soldiers, journalists and ordinary Iraqis recount one of the defining episodes of the war.

The war with Iraq was the largest mobilization of the Iranian population, achieved primarily by producing and promoting a culture of martyrdom based on religious themes found in Shi'a Islam. Martyrdom became state policy. Khomeini made it clear the war was a spiritual one that the people, and not a professional army, would fight. It would be a sacred defense; a war of good against evil, of spirit against military might, where a human wave of believers...