Three Iraqi students who spent 10 weeks in Iraq this summer provide a more positive view of the country's reconstruction progress than what is typically portrayed in the media. They describe Iraqis as optimistic about the future, with universities and schools reopened, debris being cleared, and reconstruction underway. While violence and instability continue, the students claim most Iraqis want coalition forces to remain until Iraq is ready to stand on its own and fear that Saddam could return if troops withdraw too soon.

1. ENGLISH 4 LISTENING
TRAVEL AND HOLIDAYS
BACK TO IRAQ
FROM : BBC1, BBC NEWS, BREAKFAST, MONDAY 6 OCTOBER 2003.
1 Natasha Kaplinsky: Scarcely a day goes by without a bad news story from Iraq and while the violence
2 continues there’s little sign of a country in the process of rebuilding.
3 Dermot Murnaghan : Yes, but are the images of unrest and chaos the only story to come out of Iraq?
4 Breakfast’s Mike Sergeant has been to meet one group of UK based Iraqi students who’ve just spent
5 ten weeks in Iraq to get their impressions.
6 Mike Sergeant : All their lives they’d wondered what it would be like to go back home, to go back to
7 Iraq. Yasser, Sama and Ibtihan made that journey this summer and stayed for ten weeks but the place
8 they described to me was very different from the one I had imagined.
9 Yasser Alaskary : In terms of people, you know, people, how they were feeling, how they were
10 thinking, it was really positive. People were really happy.
11 Ibtihan : It was a big dream that had come true. Obviously when we went there ten weeks ago Iraq
12 had just come out from war, some buildings had fallen down. There was a lot of destruction but at the
13 end of the day what made me very hopeful and happy was seeing Iraqi people being so optimistic for
14 the future of Iraq.
15 Mike Sergeant : This was their chance to meet relatives for the first time and judge the progress in Iraq
16 for themselves.
17 Sama Hadad : People have gone back to universities, schools are on, people have gone back to work,
18 there’s cleaners on the street, debris is being removed in bombed areas, reconstruction is taking place.
19 Yasser Alaskary : Salaries have gone up by 1,000 percent, all public sectors work at least, the markets
20 are cram-packed with electronics, fridges, satellites. You can’t go down a street without there being a
21 sattelite shop now.
22 Mike Sergeant : What about all the evidence that we have almost every day, the images of the bombs,
23 the attacks, the sabotage, the instability, the chaos, fear?
24 Yasser Alaskary : When I came back and saw media coverage I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t
25 understand how they can portray it like that while I actually saw what it was like in Iraq.
26 Ibtihan : It’s much more interesting to show your audience bombed buildings or people being killed
27 than electricity working or children going to school.
28 Mike Sergeant : They claim most of the Iraqis they met want the soldiers to stay until the country’s
29 ready to go forward on its own.
30 Sama Hadad : There is a major fear that the troops will leave and abandon the Iraqis and Saddam will
31 crawl back.
32 Ibtihan : Their general attitude towards the coalition is that they are happy with them because the
33 coalition forces do respect the Iraqi people.
34 Sama Hadad : If the coalition forces allow Iraq to fulfil and prosper into a democracy then the Iraqis
35 certainly will forgive the British and the Americans.
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