This World s10e03 Episode Script
Iraq: Did My Son Die In Vain?
Ten years ago, 200,000 troops invaded Iraq.
In the war and occupation that followed, 179 British troops lost their lives.
Now the father of one of them is heading to Iraq to discover whether his son's sacrifice was worthwhile.
I've lost a part of my life.
When he died, a part of me died.
March 20th, 2013 Chris liked aeroplanes, building models of aeroplanes.
He had lots of those hanging from the ceiling in his room.
He was a very active child, enjoyed his bike, enjoyed doing active things, skateboarding.
We were typical sort of siblings, with sibling rivalry and you know, falling out, arguing, but equally we got on really well.
One of his favourite items was his Lego and he had a Lego set that was second to none.
He loved going to air shows and he used to listen to stories from his granddad and other relations that were in the RAF.
He always wanted to be a pilot as he was growing up.
Zero, zero, you hear me? Geoff Dunsmore is a retired head teacher from Wales.
He's come 3,000 miles to Basra in Southern Iraq to follow in the footsteps of his son, Chris, who served here with the RAF in 2007.
I've got impressions made up from what Chris has told me of what Iraq was like, the barrenness, the dustiness, and the heat and all those things he described to me over the phone, because Chris had talked to me about it and he'd tried to explain it to me but to actually be able to go and feel that, to see what he was trying to explain to me, but couldn't find the words to do it, it will be an amazing journey.
I think I have pictures of my son patrolling on one of these bridges.
The American and British troops have left Iraq, but everywhere there is still evidence of the war.
Slow down, slow down.
Checkpoint.
Copy that.
So how many checkpoints from the airport to the centre of Basra? - From here, I think three or four.
On this road.
- Right.
Now, five years after his son died, Geoff has come to find out the impact of the conflict on the lives of ordinary people in Basra.
He hopes it will help him make sense of the loss of his son, and many like him.
I've got an interest in it through Chris and through what I feel and what I know, but I'm coming to Basra with an open mind because I feel that's the only fair way to be.
If I think about all the other people who've got a stake in this, who've got an involvement in this.
This is the first time Geoff has been to the Middle East.
The journey in here from the airport is like an overload of new experiences and new things to look at.
The traffic, the roads, the condition of the roads.
And as you get further in towards Basra City itself, it's absolutely poverty-stricken.
I mean, I'm slightly shocked, on top of what Chris told me, just to actually see it physically, it's just absolutely amazing.
To go from here, just outside, it's such a stark difference.
It's like this is a little oasis in the middle of absolute pandemonium.
What's that? Is that sugar in the bottom? I love a bit of tea with my sugar! Basra is Iraq's second largest city, home to around two and a half million people.
In the south of the country, it's at the heart of Iraq's vast oil fields.
After the invasion, the American forces occupied the capital city of Baghdad and much of the north of the country.
Most of the British troops who served in Iraq came here.
Local journalist Mazin Altayar has offered to be Geoff's guide around the city.
It's lovely to meet you.
Welcome to Basra.
My son believed in what he was doing.
He believed in why he was coming here and so that gives me strength, that he died doing something he believed in.
I feel so sad.
I'm sorry, very sorry for your loss and sad for other people who have lost their son in Iraq because of the fighting between the British Army and Iraqi people in Basra.
The recent history of this city is dominated by the figure of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.
He was a Sunni Muslim and for years persecuted the people of Basra, who were mostly Shia and practised a different form of Islam.
Mazin has lived in the city his whole life.
TRANSLATION: It was terrible in those days.
Saddam controlled all aspects of life.
It was the army, the police and the security authority who were really scary.
They put people in prison for up to six months just because they were suspicious of them.
The security authority in Basra used to be called the Slimming Institute because if someone fat like me went in, they came out very thin because they just didn't feed them.
That was when Saddam Hussein was in power? Saddam was there and he'd kill them, kill people.
Kill him and kill his family.
After the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein's army massacred thousands of Shia Muslims in and around Basra.
Mazin was just a child at the time but can remember seeing the brutality of Saddam's forces.
TRANSLATION: A 13-year-old friend of mine was killed by a sniper back in 1991.
The sniper would definitely have known it was a child and not a fighter because he was playing football.
So lying here, bleeding and nobody to help? Yes.
People's lives here meant being killed or imprisoned by the regime.
This killing, he used the word "killing" all the time.
It's just an unbelievable emotion to try to comprehend, that the things that these people must have seen, for me, is really mind-blowing.
In Britain, by the mid-90s, Geoff's son Chris was about to leave school.
He actually went to the RAF Careers Office and started the selection for pilot training.
But Chris couldn't realise his boyhood dream.
He wasn't able to go into the RAF and train to be a pilot because he had hayfever, so he went off to university to do computer studies.
He then started work for a paint company in Leicester, travelling all over Europe with his job.
That was quite a disappointment to him but his work was also an important part of his life and he was out in Europe, setting up factories, and I know he had some really good colleagues in his work scenario and, as with everything else in his life, he wanted to be good, he wanted to get it right and do it properly.
Yeah, a very enthusiastic young man.
But he always had that hankering for the RAF.
In March 2003, despite widespread public opposition, 46,000 British troops joined 150,000 Americans in a coalition to invade Iraq.
Their mission was to rid Iraq of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, but many supporters of the war also saw it as a chance to liberate the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam's rule.
For ordinary people on the streets of Basra, the invasion was a terrifying experience.
Mazin's friend Haitem, who runs a hotel in the centre of Basra, witnessed the moment the British troops arrived.
So there was a lot of fighting in the street below your hotel? TRANSLATION: They were blowing up all the buildings which they suspected were full of Saddam loyalists.
We watched from a distance and in about half an hour they set off an explosion.
They broke the door down, found nothing and then they left.
I think the place was a nightclub.
With Saddam's regime in hiding, the country simply ceased to function.
There was no electricity, there was no police force, the government had vanished, everything was destroyed.
Everything was looted.
Truthfully, we were so scared when the British forces entered Iraq.
In Britain, soon after the invasion, Chris Dunsmore spotted an opportunity to follow his dream.
He'd actually seen an advert in the Leicester Mercury and they were recruiting for new members in the RAF Auxiliary so he found his way into the blue uniform.
The RAF Auxiliary, like the Territorial Army, is made up of civilians who train part-time and support the regular forces.
They give up a year of their lives to go and serve.
It's incredible, actually.
They're all volunteers.
Many of them have very successful lives at home and it's quite humbling to serve with them, actually, in many ways.
I think a lot of us in regular service feel that way.
Chris was very successful.
He was a sportsman but he wanted to do something exciting, something different, something extraordinary, I think.
I'm sure he did use that word to me.
When he first joined the RAF Auxiliaries, he just said that it would be four weekends a year and I think a two-week block of training a year, and I thought maybe he wouldn't have to go in the end because maybe the situation would continue to improve and it wouldn't be necessary.
In Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction were found but the invasion was heralded a success.
Saddam was ousted from power and the Iraqi army and police force were disbanded.
But that left the coalition with the job of rebuilding the shattered country, almost from scratch.
Chris had talked about the fact that when the decision was made to invade Iraq, they thought quite clearly about the invasion and winning, but we both felt that maybe they hadn't quite got the thought in there about, well, what about afterwards? At the time of the invasion, Mazin was a journalist working in Basra.
He witnessed how local politicians backed by militia began to fill the political vacuum that followed the invasion and the fall of Saddam.
From the start, they had an uneasy relationship with the occupying forces.
TRANSLATION: At the beginning, they said they'd welcome the British but they said they'd depose them if they were coming here for a military occupation.
The success of the British mission in Basra would depend on the goodwill of the local people and co-operation with these local political groups.
They spoke to the British about what they needed but they couldn't find anyone in the British forces to listen to them.
British efforts at rebuilding and winning hearts and minds began to meet resistance.
I think the militia fought the British troops because they thought the British forces were interfering in the lives of Iraqi people and wanted to change their culture and the structure of Iraqi society.
They were opposed to this interference, and that's why the killing started.
Within a year, British troops were facing a violent insurgency in an increasingly chaotic city.
British soldiers began to lose their lives in growing numbers.
In 2006, Chris Dunsmore received a call-up.
As an RAF Auxiliary, his job would be to defend the air base on the outskirts of Basra.
When he told us that he'd been called up and he was going to go out to Iraq, he just was sort of quite blase about it, really, and said, "Oh, well, I'll just be patrolling the air base.
We'll look after the aeroplanes as they come in and take off.
" I was kind of relieved because he wasn't going to go to Afghanistan, which I had thought at the time was worse than Iraq.
It was just one of those things that he felt he had to do.
He was 29 years old, and he explained it to me as some people climb mountains, some people abseil down cliffs, some people jump out of aeroplanes, but he felt he needed to do that.
He wouldn't want in years to come to think, what if? We are servants of democracy and we have a job to do.
We, of course, are not blind to the bigger picture, to the controversy about Iraq in particular, but there's no question that if we choose to remain in the RAF that we wouldn't go to where we're sent and do as good a job as possible, and that's the same for Chris.
In March 2007, Chris left for a six-month tour of duty in Iraq.
He started a diary to record his experiences.
Poor little damaged thing.
It's precious, just to be able to see his writing.
"26/3/07 - we eventually got to the Hercules at 7:30.
Was not nervous at all until the Hercules took off, then I could not stop worrying about not seeing family again.
Eventually, I fell asleep, then the lads woke me up and told me we had landed in Basra.
" By the time Chris arrived in Basra, the conflict in the city had entered a new phase.
Hardline Islamic militia were fighting each other for control of the city.
Thousands of civilians were dying each month in assassinations and suicide bombings.
For Mazin, the memories are very raw.
His brother-in-law, Nasser, was a moderate Imam and brave enough to speak out against the militia.
This is my sister's husband, killed on 30 November in 2006 by some militia here in Basra.
I said, "Nasser, you must go out of Iraq.
" He said, "No, because this is my country and I am not afraid.
" TRANSLATION: He used to look after people who needed help and he was calling for an end to sectarian violence.
They got rid of lots of the skilled people in Iraq, the scientists, the politicians.
Religious, cultured people.
During the course of the conflict, across Iraq, 2,000 doctors and 800 academics and students were murdered.
Many more fled Iraq, fearing for their lives.
The militia were being strengthened by money and fighters from neighbouring Iran.
The neighbouring countries wanted to prove that the American and British occupation had failed in its mission in Iraq.
They wanted to warn them not to try and repeat their invasion in the neighbouring countries.
How many of the people here were killed by the militia? Most people here.
Most of the dead people, killed by the militia.
I don't know what to say.
Mazin felt he could take me to see the grave of his brother-in-law and to share that was a really touching and powerful experience for me, but then I looked across the graveyard and 75% of the people we could see had been killed by the militia and I just was amazed that that has been allowed to happen.
Three months after his brother-in-law's death, the violence would catch up with Mazin.
It's a difficult memory to share.
It was a bad day in my life.
Yeah, I can imagine.
Western journalists had mostly abandoned Basra but Iraqi journalists like Mazin still tried to get the story out to the world.
So they would have seen you filming and shot you.
Yes.
TRANSLATION: We were heading towards the Baghdad Road.
The militia were withdrawing so we decided to leave but I stopped to film some long shots, and all of a sudden I felt something sharp go into my leg.
Four more bullets were shot at me but luckily they all missed.
I was trying to report the truth and that's not a bad thing to do, but the militia and the armed groups, some of them just don't understand that.
For troops arriving at the air base outside the city, the scale of the conflict wasn't always apparent.
When Chris arrived, things at first seemed calm.
"We've been patrolling around in our area of operations which, for the most part, is quite boring apart from when we go into populated areas.
The kids run alongside and try to get us to give them bottles of water and hold their hands out to get a high five from the lads in the front seats who can reach.
The parents wave and the lads give the thumbs up.
" We went there to do a job.
I think we made some difference to the people who were living around.
No-one likes to have their country occupied but I would like to think we were seen as benign, as contributing to the stability of the area and while we were there we would do something to help them.
One of the tasks given to the British forces in Basra was helping to rebuild the city.
Chris and his squadron worked on the refurbishment of a school.
Chris wanted to go out and help the Iraqis.
He wanted to give the Iraqis a chance to make a difference in their country.
As a retired head teacher, Geoff is keen to visit an Iraqi school.
Hello, Geoff.
This is the Iraqi police saying the children are in the school.
Excellent.
I'm hoping that I'm going to find that there's an investment in the young people in Iraq because they are the future of Iraq.
His name's Ali.
Ali.
Hello, Ali.
Geoff.
This is Geoff.
Say, "Hello, Geoff.
" There is so much energy.
(BELL RINGS) My son and others came in 2007.
He came because he wanted to do something to help, to make a difference for Iraq, and I'm trying to find out if the future will be better.
Salaam alaikum.
Alaikum salaam.
Salaam alaikum.
Alaikum salaam.
Very good children, they're very quiet and very There's a lot of children in one room, Mazin.
Yes.
Yes.
Did the British help to improve the school when they were here? Before that there was no water? Was there water in the school before the? This school now does have running water and some basic equipment but a quarter of the schools in Basra are yet to be rebuilt.
Across the country, education is in crisis.
The majority of Iraqi children still don't complete even their primary school education and nearly a quarter of Iraqi women can't read or write.
I was just absolutely speechless when I looked at the environment.
There was no glass in the windows, no doors on some of the classrooms.
The classrooms were They looked like a derelict school that you'd find in Britain.
You are surprised? I am very surprised.
Very, very surprised indeed.
The thing is, my son helped in a school while he was here and I feel that we need to do something to continue that sort of work.
Even before the invasion, Iraq under Saddam had suffered years of Western sanctions, which meant that basic facilities like water, electricity and sewerage were in desperate need of repair.
TRANSLATION: When the British forces came to Basra, at first they were talking about helping people.
They were talking about helping the city and about all the things they'd rebuild in Iraq.
Now, when Chris came, he came not to fight, to help the Iraqis.
The Iraqis wanted security, they wanted a safe place, but it was asking a great deal of the British Army to come to the country, to take away Saddam, then to want to start to help but then to be attacked and have to defend themselves.
"Just had our first rocket attacks since we arrived.
Didn't even know it had happened.
We were in the mess, threw our plates away, turned around and everyone was lying on the floor, so we did as well.
We had to wait about 20 minutes for the all-clear to sound.
" David Lloyd was an RAF Reservist who served with Chris in Basra.
We were both in the accommodation.
He was in his accommodation and ours was right next to theirs.
We got to know each other pretty well.
The militia were attacking the air base with mortars and rockets.
The military call it IDF, short for "indirect fire.
" There were a couple of mortar attacks, but it was mainly rockets.
They had some quite ingenious devices that they used to make for launching them.
A couple of bits of angle iron with a scissor jack off a car.
Officially, the British were still in charge of overseeing security in Basra, but in reality they'd been pushed back, spending longer in their bases where they were coming under increasing attack.
"Three IDF attacks today, and it's getting to be the norm now.
But no-one killed, which is good.
Another IDF attack last night.
It woke me up, and I have to be up in an hour.
Bastards! We did not hear anything fall again, so it must have dropped short.
Keep up the good work, Iraqis.
" In the diary, it does make it clear how the action was escalating and even in this month, how how frequently the rockets were hitting them and how it was growing.
At one point, he mentions in here that they had 37 attacks on that day.
When coalition forces did fight back, civilians were sometimes caught in the crossfire with horrifying consequences.
This increased hostility to the occupation.
During the war, Mazin met Abu Mussan and his family.
Now he wants Geoff to hear their story.
He and his family were travelling back from visiting family graves when they encountered a convoy of American soldiers just outside the city.
TRANSLATION: We came to the Basra-Nasiriyah road.
The Americans were on the right-hand side and all the Iraqis were coming and going using the left-hand side of the road.
After we passed the Americans, a bomb exploded beside them.
A roadside bomb had torn into the American convoy.
He claims the soldiers then opened fire at his family.
They shot at us with missiles.
You can see my bus.
You can see what they did.
They aimed right in the middle of the bus, to kill as many people as possible.
They were not aiming to destroy the bus.
They were aiming to kill people.
I have 12 martyrs, 11 women and one child.
Abu Mussan's wife and daughter were among those killed.
I have no idea how it must feel for you.
I have no idea.
I I cannot even begin to imagine how you must be feeling.
The American and the British forces did not come to benefit the Iraqi people.
They came to shed the blood of the Iraqis, looting and stealing.
They raided Iraqis' houses and they didn't knock at the door.
They just smashed the door down with a hammer.
They violated families and women, taking our money, dumping people in prisons.
Erm (HE CLEARS HIS THROAT) I need you to know that my son, he was honourable.
He was true.
He believed in what he was doing.
He would not do any of these things.
My son was a very good man.
This British brother has one martyred son.
He said he has one son and he was killed.
He's feeling very sad and sorry for himself.
TRANSLATION: What really gets me is that we are all human, and when I see him crying, I want to cry myself.
They saw how Saddam Hussein made us live in terrible conditions.
We've seen the British in movies.
They care about animals.
They're humanitarian.
So it was like we were drowning and they came to rescue us.
It saddens me that these people that the British and American forces that have done this to you and you have seen doing these things.
They have built a picture that makes it look like all of our soldiers are the same, and it saddens me greatly that the soldiers who came to help are forgotten because of the bad things that have happened.
Thank God you received the corpse of your son and you know his fate.
Lots of Iraqis don't know where their sons or families are.
Please be honest, and tell the British people the truth about what happened to us.
They're clearly very angry, understandably.
I don't know whether the anger has made them feel a general dislike of the British forces, but I hope that they don't really believe that all British forces are like the people that they came across.
More than 110,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since 2003, some at the hands of coalition forces, but most in terrorist attacks by other Iraqis.
Nearly a million children have lost one or both parents as a result.
18/04, Wednesday.
I am lucky to be alive! A 120mm rocket landed 15-20 metres away from me, and only about eight metres from some of the flight.
I absolutely shit myself, as did everyone else.
But amazingly, no-one was hurt.
We all pissed about, taking photos, and joked about it.
It was quite lucky, really.
As we left to go on patrol, we'd just driven out of the car park when a mortar and rocket hit, just the other side of the gate where we were parked.
We had just left.
Got back to write this, and there has just been another IDF, which was close enough to hear the impact.
What a day!!" I wanted to think that nothing bad was going to happen, but he was going out to a war zone, so of course you think about the worst case scenario.
He went off out to Iraq and you kind of think, you know, he is going to be okay, but you get these announcements on the radio about somebody having been killed somewhere and the family has been informed, and I'd have a sort of play through my mind, "Ooh, what would that be like if it was us?" On the afternoon of 19th July 2007, a week before his 30th birthday, Chris was packing to return home for two weeks' leave.
His friend, Dave, was on his way back to the accommodation block.
One of the alarms went off so we started to take cover.
I got entangled in part of a cam net that was used to give us a bit of a screening, so that prevented me from going where I wanted to go, and that's when it happened.
The block had been hit by a huge rocket.
Didn't really see any kind of flash.
It was just, erm, just everything went black, basically.
When you're that close to an explosion there's no real sound.
It's not like hearing something that's gone off half a mile away.
It's just a pressure wave.
We were crouched on the floor at that stage and after what seemed like quite a delay, there was quite a loud crashing noise and we realised that, you know, we were getting covered in pieces of metal and general wreckage and stuff.
We sort of crawled out from underneath these steel beams and once the wreckage was cleared away, I went back and took a look, and, er if I'd ended up where I'd wanted to go, then I probably would have been in line of sight of the actual explosion, so Chris and his colleagues, Matthew Caulwell and Peter McFerran, were killed instantly and another 15 were injured.
It was a Thursday night and a gentleman came to the front door.
I looked at him, and I could tell he was from the military, and I said, "You've come to tell me something I don't want to hear.
" It was like an electric shock got shot up my body and I went rigid with the shock, you know, and I said, "He can't be, cos he should be on his way.
" The telephone call came on the actual day that he was due to be coming home, to deliver the news of what had happened, and it's kind of like a disbelief that it's actually happened to us.
There's going to be thousands and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of servicemen over there, and why should it be my boy that doesn't come back? Every day I think of him.
Every day he's there.
But when he died, a part of me died.
Now, more than five years later, Geoff has come to see the base where Chris was killed.
It's important to see for myself where he'd actually been fighting, where he'd been based, and where he lost his life.
And I suppose it's like putting flesh on the bones, if you like, to make that part of Chris's life real.
The camp is now being demolished by an American company before the land is handed back to the Iraqis.
This would have been basically the main entrance to Trenchard Camp where your son would have as I say, the old Trenchard itself, the accommodation.
John is an ex-British soldier who was stationed here for many years and now works for a company in Basra.
It's a shame to see it like this, actually, isn't it? - Not a lot of room, is there? - There isn't a lot of room.
- Yeah.
- And as you can see, - they're certainly not bulletproof or anything like that.
- No.
This is the kind of thing that would be round the outside of it, up to about four foot high, and again, just probably this and then a row of sandbags as well.
Chris talked about the mortars coming over - and the trajectory was up and down.
- Yes, yes.
And all the defensive stuff on top was there for the impact from down.
- For the impact, yes.
- But in his case, the actual rocket came in from the side and found its way through the slight gap between the roofs.
- Yes.
- And it went, it came - managed to come through.
- Yep.
(HE LAUGHS WEAKLY) Chaos reigns! Two months after Chris died, the British effectively pulled out from the centre of Basra City.
A secret deal was done with the militia to give them a safe passage out.
It was the beginning of a long and protracted withdrawal that saw the last coalition troops leave in 2011.
Today, Iraq has a fragile democracy, but terrorist attacks still kill thousands of innocent people each year.
The question for Geoff, and many of those who lost family during the long conflict is, was it all worth it? The complex history of wars and sanctions make it hard to judge the impact on the lives of ordinary Iraqis, but it's clear that Basra lacks some basic facilities.
During the occupation, the British built a water project near where Mazin used to live.
There is my house.
There.
This is old house in this building.
(HE DIRECTS DRIVER IN ARABIC) He's taking Geoff to see what's become of it now.
Salaam alaikum.
Were there any changes here when the soldiers were here and afterwards? TRANSLATION: When the British initially came, the first thing they did was they helped us get rid of the previous regime which was oppressing us.
They built us this water project.
The whole area benefited from that.
They handed it over to the council and the council let us have the water for free for six months.
Then it was assigned to a private company and they started charging for it.
The company provided water but they made no repairs.
All the repairs accumulated and the company went bust.
Now we have salty water.
This makes it very hard.
How do you survive, then? How do you get water? How do you bring water to your home? One in five Iraqis still don't have access to safe drinking water.
My son came to Iraq to help, and to help the Iraqis find freedom and find a way forwards, but it seems I'm feeling now, meeting people like you, that you need more help.
You need support and you need help.
That corruption is going to be a problem, and I feel that maybe my government could have helped to stop that happening.
We were badly oppressed.
The British helped us, but it was the government's fault the project failed, not theirs.
Thank you.
Talking to those families, it made me question it didn't make me question Chris's involvement, it made me question the wider picture.
Britain had started something off which was immense to the Iraqis, and then we've left them high and dry, literally.
Britain's direct aid programme to Iraq finished in March 2012.
Iraq's oil exports mean the country's economy is growing, but huge amounts of money are lost to the rampant corruption that dominates all aspects of Iraqi life.
A quarter of all Iraqis live on less than $2 a day.
The American government and the British government have let the Iraqis down by leaving them in the lurch.
They've left them to the corrupt politicians here.
Those people who are making money for themselves, and it saddens me to think that that's happening here, and to see it first hand is just, it's amazingly sad.
Geoff is keen to find anyone who might have met his son, Chris, when he was in Iraq.
He was just a thoroughly nice young man.
I mean, he would meet somebody maybe for half an hour, but they'd always remember him because there was something about him that would be memorable and he would always remain with them.
Mazin has tracked down a man who ran a restaurant near the base where Chris was stationed.
He got to meet many of the troops.
Did they come in to eat in your restaurant? TRANSLATION: No.
They only drank Pepsi Cola.
God! The majority of the British soldiers had good manners and were well trained.
They were saying they were forced to invade Iraq.
I don't have any contact with them now.
I've even forgotten what they looked like.
Something that people ask me all the time back in Britain is, "Was it worth it? Was it worth losing their lives?" As somebody from Iraq who welcomed the British forces, do you feel it was worth them coming for Iraq? I swear to God, I can't answer that question.
They talked about weapons of mass destruction and they couldn't find anything.
That was the excuse that America used to invade Iraq.
They did not bring democracy to Iraq.
They spread violence and chaos and they've left behind only rubble.
The constitution has been violated and there is no proper government here.
They spread chaos and just left.
It's nearly time for Geoff to leave Iraq, but before he goes, he's arranged to meet a group of young activists who believe that with the new freedoms they have in Iraq, they can fight corruption and build a better future.
I was born in 1980.
War, war, war.
Yeah.
So how can I love war? Yeah.
I've seen only war, so we are now trying to change the idea.
Using teams mobilised on Facebook, Khalid helps organise groups of young Iraqis who give up their free time to clean up their city.
So this is the brochure talking about cleanness.
There are all our people in Basra.
We like them to love Basra and keep it clean and beautiful.
Yeah.
So volunteering and participating in our campaign, - you can go on our Facebook site.
- Excellent.
Also we have a YouTube channel for motivating videos.
And so are we going to go down the street and look - We tell them, we give them that paper - Yeah.
and we will tell them our dream, we will tell them our perspective.
And you feel that inspires change? A lot.
A lot.
Okay? The rubbish is rarely collected because of the corruption that blights the city.
The group post pictures on the internet of the squalid streets to try and hold the authorities to account.
Are all the shopkeepers happy to talk to you? Yes mmm - Yes, not all? - 99%.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
- You should find an angry one! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The group includes people from all sections of society.
So this campaign, is it about the way you feel about the religion of it? Is it like does it cover that? By the way, we don't know the religion of each other.
- Okay.
That's good.
- We forget about that.
That's good.
So it's across, it breaks all the boundaries? Each one of us is a unique person - Excellent.
- as it is.
What occupations do you all have? Oh, occupations.
Pharmacist, a doctor, a student, handyman - Legal management.
- Legal management, - a student, a photographer - Teacher.
- a teacher - A teacher, oh! - works in insurance - Oh! a journalist.
Someone's profession, whatever they do, it's no barrier to joining and getting involved? No, no, no.
That's all nothing, nothing at all.
It's open to every young person? - Everyone is welcome in our group.
- Fantastic.
The young people I spoke to who are clearing the streets and wanting to make Basra a better place, they're not bothering about what religion any of their workers are.
They don't want to know that.
All they want to know is that they're there to help Basra.
And to me, that's a really powerful message that I would want people in Britain to know.
That it has changed.
It's time for Geoff to say goodbye to Mazin.
I have had a very emotional visit here.
I have had to hear some things that are very hard to hear, but so many people have informed me and told me what Iraq is and how they feel.
But more important, all the people I have spoken to have told me what they would like Iraq to be like.
- Yes.
- But I'm going back from Iraq different.
I hope you can tell the story about Iraqi people, and you show everything that happened here in Basra after the British army and American, they come to my country.
Yeah.
And I'm very grateful for what you have done for me.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Welcome any time.
But before he goes, Geoff has one last thing to do.
I would love to have put something here in remembrance, and I'm just walking around thinking, "Where can I put it?" Because if I put a cross here the back view, the view would be this, and that's not how I would want to remember this moment.
In some ways, I've got to see this and I've got to understand this, which I think I do, but I don't know.
As much as I'm proud of what he did, and why he did it, to me, he's far too valuable to have done that for somebody else, you know, for another country.
I don't know how long it's going to stay there.
Chris is in my mind every day.
There is not a day that goes past when I don't think about him.
He thought he was doing something worthwhile and I would love to feel that we'd helped in some way, but I don't know whether I can really say that it was worth Chris dying for.
(HE SNIFFS) I'll never, ever think that Chris gave his life for just you know, so that's never going to be a waste of time, but I just, I think, "God, all the people that we've lost.
" And we gave up such a lot, and it cost such a lot.
And you think, "For what?"
In the war and occupation that followed, 179 British troops lost their lives.
Now the father of one of them is heading to Iraq to discover whether his son's sacrifice was worthwhile.
I've lost a part of my life.
When he died, a part of me died.
March 20th, 2013 Chris liked aeroplanes, building models of aeroplanes.
He had lots of those hanging from the ceiling in his room.
He was a very active child, enjoyed his bike, enjoyed doing active things, skateboarding.
We were typical sort of siblings, with sibling rivalry and you know, falling out, arguing, but equally we got on really well.
One of his favourite items was his Lego and he had a Lego set that was second to none.
He loved going to air shows and he used to listen to stories from his granddad and other relations that were in the RAF.
He always wanted to be a pilot as he was growing up.
Zero, zero, you hear me? Geoff Dunsmore is a retired head teacher from Wales.
He's come 3,000 miles to Basra in Southern Iraq to follow in the footsteps of his son, Chris, who served here with the RAF in 2007.
I've got impressions made up from what Chris has told me of what Iraq was like, the barrenness, the dustiness, and the heat and all those things he described to me over the phone, because Chris had talked to me about it and he'd tried to explain it to me but to actually be able to go and feel that, to see what he was trying to explain to me, but couldn't find the words to do it, it will be an amazing journey.
I think I have pictures of my son patrolling on one of these bridges.
The American and British troops have left Iraq, but everywhere there is still evidence of the war.
Slow down, slow down.
Checkpoint.
Copy that.
So how many checkpoints from the airport to the centre of Basra? - From here, I think three or four.
On this road.
- Right.
Now, five years after his son died, Geoff has come to find out the impact of the conflict on the lives of ordinary people in Basra.
He hopes it will help him make sense of the loss of his son, and many like him.
I've got an interest in it through Chris and through what I feel and what I know, but I'm coming to Basra with an open mind because I feel that's the only fair way to be.
If I think about all the other people who've got a stake in this, who've got an involvement in this.
This is the first time Geoff has been to the Middle East.
The journey in here from the airport is like an overload of new experiences and new things to look at.
The traffic, the roads, the condition of the roads.
And as you get further in towards Basra City itself, it's absolutely poverty-stricken.
I mean, I'm slightly shocked, on top of what Chris told me, just to actually see it physically, it's just absolutely amazing.
To go from here, just outside, it's such a stark difference.
It's like this is a little oasis in the middle of absolute pandemonium.
What's that? Is that sugar in the bottom? I love a bit of tea with my sugar! Basra is Iraq's second largest city, home to around two and a half million people.
In the south of the country, it's at the heart of Iraq's vast oil fields.
After the invasion, the American forces occupied the capital city of Baghdad and much of the north of the country.
Most of the British troops who served in Iraq came here.
Local journalist Mazin Altayar has offered to be Geoff's guide around the city.
It's lovely to meet you.
Welcome to Basra.
My son believed in what he was doing.
He believed in why he was coming here and so that gives me strength, that he died doing something he believed in.
I feel so sad.
I'm sorry, very sorry for your loss and sad for other people who have lost their son in Iraq because of the fighting between the British Army and Iraqi people in Basra.
The recent history of this city is dominated by the figure of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.
He was a Sunni Muslim and for years persecuted the people of Basra, who were mostly Shia and practised a different form of Islam.
Mazin has lived in the city his whole life.
TRANSLATION: It was terrible in those days.
Saddam controlled all aspects of life.
It was the army, the police and the security authority who were really scary.
They put people in prison for up to six months just because they were suspicious of them.
The security authority in Basra used to be called the Slimming Institute because if someone fat like me went in, they came out very thin because they just didn't feed them.
That was when Saddam Hussein was in power? Saddam was there and he'd kill them, kill people.
Kill him and kill his family.
After the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein's army massacred thousands of Shia Muslims in and around Basra.
Mazin was just a child at the time but can remember seeing the brutality of Saddam's forces.
TRANSLATION: A 13-year-old friend of mine was killed by a sniper back in 1991.
The sniper would definitely have known it was a child and not a fighter because he was playing football.
So lying here, bleeding and nobody to help? Yes.
People's lives here meant being killed or imprisoned by the regime.
This killing, he used the word "killing" all the time.
It's just an unbelievable emotion to try to comprehend, that the things that these people must have seen, for me, is really mind-blowing.
In Britain, by the mid-90s, Geoff's son Chris was about to leave school.
He actually went to the RAF Careers Office and started the selection for pilot training.
But Chris couldn't realise his boyhood dream.
He wasn't able to go into the RAF and train to be a pilot because he had hayfever, so he went off to university to do computer studies.
He then started work for a paint company in Leicester, travelling all over Europe with his job.
That was quite a disappointment to him but his work was also an important part of his life and he was out in Europe, setting up factories, and I know he had some really good colleagues in his work scenario and, as with everything else in his life, he wanted to be good, he wanted to get it right and do it properly.
Yeah, a very enthusiastic young man.
But he always had that hankering for the RAF.
In March 2003, despite widespread public opposition, 46,000 British troops joined 150,000 Americans in a coalition to invade Iraq.
Their mission was to rid Iraq of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, but many supporters of the war also saw it as a chance to liberate the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam's rule.
For ordinary people on the streets of Basra, the invasion was a terrifying experience.
Mazin's friend Haitem, who runs a hotel in the centre of Basra, witnessed the moment the British troops arrived.
So there was a lot of fighting in the street below your hotel? TRANSLATION: They were blowing up all the buildings which they suspected were full of Saddam loyalists.
We watched from a distance and in about half an hour they set off an explosion.
They broke the door down, found nothing and then they left.
I think the place was a nightclub.
With Saddam's regime in hiding, the country simply ceased to function.
There was no electricity, there was no police force, the government had vanished, everything was destroyed.
Everything was looted.
Truthfully, we were so scared when the British forces entered Iraq.
In Britain, soon after the invasion, Chris Dunsmore spotted an opportunity to follow his dream.
He'd actually seen an advert in the Leicester Mercury and they were recruiting for new members in the RAF Auxiliary so he found his way into the blue uniform.
The RAF Auxiliary, like the Territorial Army, is made up of civilians who train part-time and support the regular forces.
They give up a year of their lives to go and serve.
It's incredible, actually.
They're all volunteers.
Many of them have very successful lives at home and it's quite humbling to serve with them, actually, in many ways.
I think a lot of us in regular service feel that way.
Chris was very successful.
He was a sportsman but he wanted to do something exciting, something different, something extraordinary, I think.
I'm sure he did use that word to me.
When he first joined the RAF Auxiliaries, he just said that it would be four weekends a year and I think a two-week block of training a year, and I thought maybe he wouldn't have to go in the end because maybe the situation would continue to improve and it wouldn't be necessary.
In Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction were found but the invasion was heralded a success.
Saddam was ousted from power and the Iraqi army and police force were disbanded.
But that left the coalition with the job of rebuilding the shattered country, almost from scratch.
Chris had talked about the fact that when the decision was made to invade Iraq, they thought quite clearly about the invasion and winning, but we both felt that maybe they hadn't quite got the thought in there about, well, what about afterwards? At the time of the invasion, Mazin was a journalist working in Basra.
He witnessed how local politicians backed by militia began to fill the political vacuum that followed the invasion and the fall of Saddam.
From the start, they had an uneasy relationship with the occupying forces.
TRANSLATION: At the beginning, they said they'd welcome the British but they said they'd depose them if they were coming here for a military occupation.
The success of the British mission in Basra would depend on the goodwill of the local people and co-operation with these local political groups.
They spoke to the British about what they needed but they couldn't find anyone in the British forces to listen to them.
British efforts at rebuilding and winning hearts and minds began to meet resistance.
I think the militia fought the British troops because they thought the British forces were interfering in the lives of Iraqi people and wanted to change their culture and the structure of Iraqi society.
They were opposed to this interference, and that's why the killing started.
Within a year, British troops were facing a violent insurgency in an increasingly chaotic city.
British soldiers began to lose their lives in growing numbers.
In 2006, Chris Dunsmore received a call-up.
As an RAF Auxiliary, his job would be to defend the air base on the outskirts of Basra.
When he told us that he'd been called up and he was going to go out to Iraq, he just was sort of quite blase about it, really, and said, "Oh, well, I'll just be patrolling the air base.
We'll look after the aeroplanes as they come in and take off.
" I was kind of relieved because he wasn't going to go to Afghanistan, which I had thought at the time was worse than Iraq.
It was just one of those things that he felt he had to do.
He was 29 years old, and he explained it to me as some people climb mountains, some people abseil down cliffs, some people jump out of aeroplanes, but he felt he needed to do that.
He wouldn't want in years to come to think, what if? We are servants of democracy and we have a job to do.
We, of course, are not blind to the bigger picture, to the controversy about Iraq in particular, but there's no question that if we choose to remain in the RAF that we wouldn't go to where we're sent and do as good a job as possible, and that's the same for Chris.
In March 2007, Chris left for a six-month tour of duty in Iraq.
He started a diary to record his experiences.
Poor little damaged thing.
It's precious, just to be able to see his writing.
"26/3/07 - we eventually got to the Hercules at 7:30.
Was not nervous at all until the Hercules took off, then I could not stop worrying about not seeing family again.
Eventually, I fell asleep, then the lads woke me up and told me we had landed in Basra.
" By the time Chris arrived in Basra, the conflict in the city had entered a new phase.
Hardline Islamic militia were fighting each other for control of the city.
Thousands of civilians were dying each month in assassinations and suicide bombings.
For Mazin, the memories are very raw.
His brother-in-law, Nasser, was a moderate Imam and brave enough to speak out against the militia.
This is my sister's husband, killed on 30 November in 2006 by some militia here in Basra.
I said, "Nasser, you must go out of Iraq.
" He said, "No, because this is my country and I am not afraid.
" TRANSLATION: He used to look after people who needed help and he was calling for an end to sectarian violence.
They got rid of lots of the skilled people in Iraq, the scientists, the politicians.
Religious, cultured people.
During the course of the conflict, across Iraq, 2,000 doctors and 800 academics and students were murdered.
Many more fled Iraq, fearing for their lives.
The militia were being strengthened by money and fighters from neighbouring Iran.
The neighbouring countries wanted to prove that the American and British occupation had failed in its mission in Iraq.
They wanted to warn them not to try and repeat their invasion in the neighbouring countries.
How many of the people here were killed by the militia? Most people here.
Most of the dead people, killed by the militia.
I don't know what to say.
Mazin felt he could take me to see the grave of his brother-in-law and to share that was a really touching and powerful experience for me, but then I looked across the graveyard and 75% of the people we could see had been killed by the militia and I just was amazed that that has been allowed to happen.
Three months after his brother-in-law's death, the violence would catch up with Mazin.
It's a difficult memory to share.
It was a bad day in my life.
Yeah, I can imagine.
Western journalists had mostly abandoned Basra but Iraqi journalists like Mazin still tried to get the story out to the world.
So they would have seen you filming and shot you.
Yes.
TRANSLATION: We were heading towards the Baghdad Road.
The militia were withdrawing so we decided to leave but I stopped to film some long shots, and all of a sudden I felt something sharp go into my leg.
Four more bullets were shot at me but luckily they all missed.
I was trying to report the truth and that's not a bad thing to do, but the militia and the armed groups, some of them just don't understand that.
For troops arriving at the air base outside the city, the scale of the conflict wasn't always apparent.
When Chris arrived, things at first seemed calm.
"We've been patrolling around in our area of operations which, for the most part, is quite boring apart from when we go into populated areas.
The kids run alongside and try to get us to give them bottles of water and hold their hands out to get a high five from the lads in the front seats who can reach.
The parents wave and the lads give the thumbs up.
" We went there to do a job.
I think we made some difference to the people who were living around.
No-one likes to have their country occupied but I would like to think we were seen as benign, as contributing to the stability of the area and while we were there we would do something to help them.
One of the tasks given to the British forces in Basra was helping to rebuild the city.
Chris and his squadron worked on the refurbishment of a school.
Chris wanted to go out and help the Iraqis.
He wanted to give the Iraqis a chance to make a difference in their country.
As a retired head teacher, Geoff is keen to visit an Iraqi school.
Hello, Geoff.
This is the Iraqi police saying the children are in the school.
Excellent.
I'm hoping that I'm going to find that there's an investment in the young people in Iraq because they are the future of Iraq.
His name's Ali.
Ali.
Hello, Ali.
Geoff.
This is Geoff.
Say, "Hello, Geoff.
" There is so much energy.
(BELL RINGS) My son and others came in 2007.
He came because he wanted to do something to help, to make a difference for Iraq, and I'm trying to find out if the future will be better.
Salaam alaikum.
Alaikum salaam.
Salaam alaikum.
Alaikum salaam.
Very good children, they're very quiet and very There's a lot of children in one room, Mazin.
Yes.
Yes.
Did the British help to improve the school when they were here? Before that there was no water? Was there water in the school before the? This school now does have running water and some basic equipment but a quarter of the schools in Basra are yet to be rebuilt.
Across the country, education is in crisis.
The majority of Iraqi children still don't complete even their primary school education and nearly a quarter of Iraqi women can't read or write.
I was just absolutely speechless when I looked at the environment.
There was no glass in the windows, no doors on some of the classrooms.
The classrooms were They looked like a derelict school that you'd find in Britain.
You are surprised? I am very surprised.
Very, very surprised indeed.
The thing is, my son helped in a school while he was here and I feel that we need to do something to continue that sort of work.
Even before the invasion, Iraq under Saddam had suffered years of Western sanctions, which meant that basic facilities like water, electricity and sewerage were in desperate need of repair.
TRANSLATION: When the British forces came to Basra, at first they were talking about helping people.
They were talking about helping the city and about all the things they'd rebuild in Iraq.
Now, when Chris came, he came not to fight, to help the Iraqis.
The Iraqis wanted security, they wanted a safe place, but it was asking a great deal of the British Army to come to the country, to take away Saddam, then to want to start to help but then to be attacked and have to defend themselves.
"Just had our first rocket attacks since we arrived.
Didn't even know it had happened.
We were in the mess, threw our plates away, turned around and everyone was lying on the floor, so we did as well.
We had to wait about 20 minutes for the all-clear to sound.
" David Lloyd was an RAF Reservist who served with Chris in Basra.
We were both in the accommodation.
He was in his accommodation and ours was right next to theirs.
We got to know each other pretty well.
The militia were attacking the air base with mortars and rockets.
The military call it IDF, short for "indirect fire.
" There were a couple of mortar attacks, but it was mainly rockets.
They had some quite ingenious devices that they used to make for launching them.
A couple of bits of angle iron with a scissor jack off a car.
Officially, the British were still in charge of overseeing security in Basra, but in reality they'd been pushed back, spending longer in their bases where they were coming under increasing attack.
"Three IDF attacks today, and it's getting to be the norm now.
But no-one killed, which is good.
Another IDF attack last night.
It woke me up, and I have to be up in an hour.
Bastards! We did not hear anything fall again, so it must have dropped short.
Keep up the good work, Iraqis.
" In the diary, it does make it clear how the action was escalating and even in this month, how how frequently the rockets were hitting them and how it was growing.
At one point, he mentions in here that they had 37 attacks on that day.
When coalition forces did fight back, civilians were sometimes caught in the crossfire with horrifying consequences.
This increased hostility to the occupation.
During the war, Mazin met Abu Mussan and his family.
Now he wants Geoff to hear their story.
He and his family were travelling back from visiting family graves when they encountered a convoy of American soldiers just outside the city.
TRANSLATION: We came to the Basra-Nasiriyah road.
The Americans were on the right-hand side and all the Iraqis were coming and going using the left-hand side of the road.
After we passed the Americans, a bomb exploded beside them.
A roadside bomb had torn into the American convoy.
He claims the soldiers then opened fire at his family.
They shot at us with missiles.
You can see my bus.
You can see what they did.
They aimed right in the middle of the bus, to kill as many people as possible.
They were not aiming to destroy the bus.
They were aiming to kill people.
I have 12 martyrs, 11 women and one child.
Abu Mussan's wife and daughter were among those killed.
I have no idea how it must feel for you.
I have no idea.
I I cannot even begin to imagine how you must be feeling.
The American and the British forces did not come to benefit the Iraqi people.
They came to shed the blood of the Iraqis, looting and stealing.
They raided Iraqis' houses and they didn't knock at the door.
They just smashed the door down with a hammer.
They violated families and women, taking our money, dumping people in prisons.
Erm (HE CLEARS HIS THROAT) I need you to know that my son, he was honourable.
He was true.
He believed in what he was doing.
He would not do any of these things.
My son was a very good man.
This British brother has one martyred son.
He said he has one son and he was killed.
He's feeling very sad and sorry for himself.
TRANSLATION: What really gets me is that we are all human, and when I see him crying, I want to cry myself.
They saw how Saddam Hussein made us live in terrible conditions.
We've seen the British in movies.
They care about animals.
They're humanitarian.
So it was like we were drowning and they came to rescue us.
It saddens me that these people that the British and American forces that have done this to you and you have seen doing these things.
They have built a picture that makes it look like all of our soldiers are the same, and it saddens me greatly that the soldiers who came to help are forgotten because of the bad things that have happened.
Thank God you received the corpse of your son and you know his fate.
Lots of Iraqis don't know where their sons or families are.
Please be honest, and tell the British people the truth about what happened to us.
They're clearly very angry, understandably.
I don't know whether the anger has made them feel a general dislike of the British forces, but I hope that they don't really believe that all British forces are like the people that they came across.
More than 110,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since 2003, some at the hands of coalition forces, but most in terrorist attacks by other Iraqis.
Nearly a million children have lost one or both parents as a result.
18/04, Wednesday.
I am lucky to be alive! A 120mm rocket landed 15-20 metres away from me, and only about eight metres from some of the flight.
I absolutely shit myself, as did everyone else.
But amazingly, no-one was hurt.
We all pissed about, taking photos, and joked about it.
It was quite lucky, really.
As we left to go on patrol, we'd just driven out of the car park when a mortar and rocket hit, just the other side of the gate where we were parked.
We had just left.
Got back to write this, and there has just been another IDF, which was close enough to hear the impact.
What a day!!" I wanted to think that nothing bad was going to happen, but he was going out to a war zone, so of course you think about the worst case scenario.
He went off out to Iraq and you kind of think, you know, he is going to be okay, but you get these announcements on the radio about somebody having been killed somewhere and the family has been informed, and I'd have a sort of play through my mind, "Ooh, what would that be like if it was us?" On the afternoon of 19th July 2007, a week before his 30th birthday, Chris was packing to return home for two weeks' leave.
His friend, Dave, was on his way back to the accommodation block.
One of the alarms went off so we started to take cover.
I got entangled in part of a cam net that was used to give us a bit of a screening, so that prevented me from going where I wanted to go, and that's when it happened.
The block had been hit by a huge rocket.
Didn't really see any kind of flash.
It was just, erm, just everything went black, basically.
When you're that close to an explosion there's no real sound.
It's not like hearing something that's gone off half a mile away.
It's just a pressure wave.
We were crouched on the floor at that stage and after what seemed like quite a delay, there was quite a loud crashing noise and we realised that, you know, we were getting covered in pieces of metal and general wreckage and stuff.
We sort of crawled out from underneath these steel beams and once the wreckage was cleared away, I went back and took a look, and, er if I'd ended up where I'd wanted to go, then I probably would have been in line of sight of the actual explosion, so Chris and his colleagues, Matthew Caulwell and Peter McFerran, were killed instantly and another 15 were injured.
It was a Thursday night and a gentleman came to the front door.
I looked at him, and I could tell he was from the military, and I said, "You've come to tell me something I don't want to hear.
" It was like an electric shock got shot up my body and I went rigid with the shock, you know, and I said, "He can't be, cos he should be on his way.
" The telephone call came on the actual day that he was due to be coming home, to deliver the news of what had happened, and it's kind of like a disbelief that it's actually happened to us.
There's going to be thousands and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of servicemen over there, and why should it be my boy that doesn't come back? Every day I think of him.
Every day he's there.
But when he died, a part of me died.
Now, more than five years later, Geoff has come to see the base where Chris was killed.
It's important to see for myself where he'd actually been fighting, where he'd been based, and where he lost his life.
And I suppose it's like putting flesh on the bones, if you like, to make that part of Chris's life real.
The camp is now being demolished by an American company before the land is handed back to the Iraqis.
This would have been basically the main entrance to Trenchard Camp where your son would have as I say, the old Trenchard itself, the accommodation.
John is an ex-British soldier who was stationed here for many years and now works for a company in Basra.
It's a shame to see it like this, actually, isn't it? - Not a lot of room, is there? - There isn't a lot of room.
- Yeah.
- And as you can see, - they're certainly not bulletproof or anything like that.
- No.
This is the kind of thing that would be round the outside of it, up to about four foot high, and again, just probably this and then a row of sandbags as well.
Chris talked about the mortars coming over - and the trajectory was up and down.
- Yes, yes.
And all the defensive stuff on top was there for the impact from down.
- For the impact, yes.
- But in his case, the actual rocket came in from the side and found its way through the slight gap between the roofs.
- Yes.
- And it went, it came - managed to come through.
- Yep.
(HE LAUGHS WEAKLY) Chaos reigns! Two months after Chris died, the British effectively pulled out from the centre of Basra City.
A secret deal was done with the militia to give them a safe passage out.
It was the beginning of a long and protracted withdrawal that saw the last coalition troops leave in 2011.
Today, Iraq has a fragile democracy, but terrorist attacks still kill thousands of innocent people each year.
The question for Geoff, and many of those who lost family during the long conflict is, was it all worth it? The complex history of wars and sanctions make it hard to judge the impact on the lives of ordinary Iraqis, but it's clear that Basra lacks some basic facilities.
During the occupation, the British built a water project near where Mazin used to live.
There is my house.
There.
This is old house in this building.
(HE DIRECTS DRIVER IN ARABIC) He's taking Geoff to see what's become of it now.
Salaam alaikum.
Were there any changes here when the soldiers were here and afterwards? TRANSLATION: When the British initially came, the first thing they did was they helped us get rid of the previous regime which was oppressing us.
They built us this water project.
The whole area benefited from that.
They handed it over to the council and the council let us have the water for free for six months.
Then it was assigned to a private company and they started charging for it.
The company provided water but they made no repairs.
All the repairs accumulated and the company went bust.
Now we have salty water.
This makes it very hard.
How do you survive, then? How do you get water? How do you bring water to your home? One in five Iraqis still don't have access to safe drinking water.
My son came to Iraq to help, and to help the Iraqis find freedom and find a way forwards, but it seems I'm feeling now, meeting people like you, that you need more help.
You need support and you need help.
That corruption is going to be a problem, and I feel that maybe my government could have helped to stop that happening.
We were badly oppressed.
The British helped us, but it was the government's fault the project failed, not theirs.
Thank you.
Talking to those families, it made me question it didn't make me question Chris's involvement, it made me question the wider picture.
Britain had started something off which was immense to the Iraqis, and then we've left them high and dry, literally.
Britain's direct aid programme to Iraq finished in March 2012.
Iraq's oil exports mean the country's economy is growing, but huge amounts of money are lost to the rampant corruption that dominates all aspects of Iraqi life.
A quarter of all Iraqis live on less than $2 a day.
The American government and the British government have let the Iraqis down by leaving them in the lurch.
They've left them to the corrupt politicians here.
Those people who are making money for themselves, and it saddens me to think that that's happening here, and to see it first hand is just, it's amazingly sad.
Geoff is keen to find anyone who might have met his son, Chris, when he was in Iraq.
He was just a thoroughly nice young man.
I mean, he would meet somebody maybe for half an hour, but they'd always remember him because there was something about him that would be memorable and he would always remain with them.
Mazin has tracked down a man who ran a restaurant near the base where Chris was stationed.
He got to meet many of the troops.
Did they come in to eat in your restaurant? TRANSLATION: No.
They only drank Pepsi Cola.
God! The majority of the British soldiers had good manners and were well trained.
They were saying they were forced to invade Iraq.
I don't have any contact with them now.
I've even forgotten what they looked like.
Something that people ask me all the time back in Britain is, "Was it worth it? Was it worth losing their lives?" As somebody from Iraq who welcomed the British forces, do you feel it was worth them coming for Iraq? I swear to God, I can't answer that question.
They talked about weapons of mass destruction and they couldn't find anything.
That was the excuse that America used to invade Iraq.
They did not bring democracy to Iraq.
They spread violence and chaos and they've left behind only rubble.
The constitution has been violated and there is no proper government here.
They spread chaos and just left.
It's nearly time for Geoff to leave Iraq, but before he goes, he's arranged to meet a group of young activists who believe that with the new freedoms they have in Iraq, they can fight corruption and build a better future.
I was born in 1980.
War, war, war.
Yeah.
So how can I love war? Yeah.
I've seen only war, so we are now trying to change the idea.
Using teams mobilised on Facebook, Khalid helps organise groups of young Iraqis who give up their free time to clean up their city.
So this is the brochure talking about cleanness.
There are all our people in Basra.
We like them to love Basra and keep it clean and beautiful.
Yeah.
So volunteering and participating in our campaign, - you can go on our Facebook site.
- Excellent.
Also we have a YouTube channel for motivating videos.
And so are we going to go down the street and look - We tell them, we give them that paper - Yeah.
and we will tell them our dream, we will tell them our perspective.
And you feel that inspires change? A lot.
A lot.
Okay? The rubbish is rarely collected because of the corruption that blights the city.
The group post pictures on the internet of the squalid streets to try and hold the authorities to account.
Are all the shopkeepers happy to talk to you? Yes mmm - Yes, not all? - 99%.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
- You should find an angry one! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The group includes people from all sections of society.
So this campaign, is it about the way you feel about the religion of it? Is it like does it cover that? By the way, we don't know the religion of each other.
- Okay.
That's good.
- We forget about that.
That's good.
So it's across, it breaks all the boundaries? Each one of us is a unique person - Excellent.
- as it is.
What occupations do you all have? Oh, occupations.
Pharmacist, a doctor, a student, handyman - Legal management.
- Legal management, - a student, a photographer - Teacher.
- a teacher - A teacher, oh! - works in insurance - Oh! a journalist.
Someone's profession, whatever they do, it's no barrier to joining and getting involved? No, no, no.
That's all nothing, nothing at all.
It's open to every young person? - Everyone is welcome in our group.
- Fantastic.
The young people I spoke to who are clearing the streets and wanting to make Basra a better place, they're not bothering about what religion any of their workers are.
They don't want to know that.
All they want to know is that they're there to help Basra.
And to me, that's a really powerful message that I would want people in Britain to know.
That it has changed.
It's time for Geoff to say goodbye to Mazin.
I have had a very emotional visit here.
I have had to hear some things that are very hard to hear, but so many people have informed me and told me what Iraq is and how they feel.
But more important, all the people I have spoken to have told me what they would like Iraq to be like.
- Yes.
- But I'm going back from Iraq different.
I hope you can tell the story about Iraqi people, and you show everything that happened here in Basra after the British army and American, they come to my country.
Yeah.
And I'm very grateful for what you have done for me.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Welcome any time.
But before he goes, Geoff has one last thing to do.
I would love to have put something here in remembrance, and I'm just walking around thinking, "Where can I put it?" Because if I put a cross here the back view, the view would be this, and that's not how I would want to remember this moment.
In some ways, I've got to see this and I've got to understand this, which I think I do, but I don't know.
As much as I'm proud of what he did, and why he did it, to me, he's far too valuable to have done that for somebody else, you know, for another country.
I don't know how long it's going to stay there.
Chris is in my mind every day.
There is not a day that goes past when I don't think about him.
He thought he was doing something worthwhile and I would love to feel that we'd helped in some way, but I don't know whether I can really say that it was worth Chris dying for.
(HE SNIFFS) I'll never, ever think that Chris gave his life for just you know, so that's never going to be a waste of time, but I just, I think, "God, all the people that we've lost.
" And we gave up such a lot, and it cost such a lot.
And you think, "For what?"