Battle for Karbala

On 3 April 2004, during the Ashura, Iraqi rebels launched an uprising in the Polish zone. Unknown number of Mahdi's Army soldiers have attacked City Hall. About 50 men - Polish Infantry (32 soldiers) and dozen of Bulgarian special forces defended City Hall. The heavy combat took 4 days. This film is based on true story. I have many friends from Poland who were in Iraq and Afghanistan and they confirm - this is truth. The best proof is that Americans forced Polish government to hide it and nobody could talk officially about this until now. The movie is well done: tension, pace, action, scenario, dialogs. Even if you are addicted to American productions you could like it. However, it is not a Hollywood production, obviously.

Those who think it's a science fiction or propaganda - sorry, pals, it's a true story. From the Bulgarian side it was officially stated and the story was told from it's own heroes. The attacks happened mostly night as poles and Bulgarians didn't have much equipment for night vision and Mahdi's attackers knew that. The soldiers were shooting in direction of the reflection of metal. The mortars fire was apparently mostly dangerous and because it came from small 65mm mortars that can easily be loaded on cars. The person who neutralize the mortar fire - Sergeant Ivan Mihaylov took initiative and with another 4 comrades run for about 2.5km in the night getting into the back of the attackers and surprised them. The actual number of attackers was not known, although they guess that Mahdi's supporters that came in Kerbala was at least 360 and more locals joined them. The Polish and Bulgarian units were sent to help the city hall as the Iraqi soldiers there suffered an attack. Poles and Bulgarians managed to get to the hall through 2 ambushes and once in the hall, the severe attacks began. Back to the movie - it's definitely a very nice war movie, but it's not a surprise - every third good producer and director in Hollywood is Polish. They tried to keep to the original story as much as they could and gave a good glance of the whole story. Worth seeing and definitely it will come ahead of many war movies I've seen.

I admit I haven't seen a lot of Polish films. Just Ziarno prawdy, In Darkness, Katyn, Ida... which were very good. And 1920 Battle of Warsaw, which was horrible. This movie isn't as bad as the latter, but comes nowhere close to the former ones.

A typical propaganda piece - humanizing the protagonists, with their relationships, their full spectrum of emotions, family drama and the regular filler material, portraying them as heroes, while dehumanizing the antagonists as radicalized terrorists. "Karbala" toes the western "liberator" line, but isn't as propagandist as American Sniper of late, as European films tend to be less brash & action- oriented, and attempts to be more humanistic.

What ACTUALLY happened was that Iraqi Shiites of Sadr City (named after Muqtada's father who was a prominent Shia cleric) in Baghdad formed self-defense groups to protect their neighborhoods from coalition forces & al-Qaeda-linked insurgents during the post-Saddam power vacuum. These groups were extremely popular, more people joined and expanded across Shiite strongholds such as Najaf & Karbala.

Muqtada Sadr published a newspaper "al-Hawza" that celebrated Saddam's fall, but criticized the coalition for the occupation & infringing Iraqi sovereignty. This angered the coalition and they attacked his office & kidnapped his aide, which prompted the groups to rally protests. These protests were crushed brutally by coalition forces, and THAT is when they took up arms.

Now, the place Karbala is *very* holy to Shiites as it was the scene of the massacre of Husayn ibn Ali and his followers. No amount of empathizing by westerners can help them to fathom it's significance. Obviously this is where the resistance to the occupation was strongest, and Iraqi Shiites from across the nation poured in to prevent desecration of their holy site.

What makes this movie suck (for me) is it's attempt at misinformation - specifically, equating Shiite self-defense groups to al-Qaeda terrorists (who consider Shiites as apostates who need to be genocided). It doesn't offer anything that typical war propaganda movies don't. Maybe just the fact that there are Bulgarians in this :-D.

@Vishnu S- its just a movie. I don't believe it said documentary or based on true events anywhere in its description. Its not a history lesson or something you should hold facts to so get over yourself and go criticize a documentary. Its a drama not a history lesson. As for calling it propaganda, are you f@!king serious? Anyone who believes that load of crap or is persuaded by this movie should join you and your mission to educate the world based on fictitious movies. I highly doubt the director or creator of this movie was trying to trick people into thinking American soldiers are heroes. They don't have to because for most of us, we already feel that way about our soldiers. And yes it is a movie so they are going to glorify the good guys and make the bad guys look bad. Thats usually how movies work. Its funny how you had to correct certain things that weren't true, then had to try and educate people on the truth. Its a MOVIE.. If your so intelligent why couldn't you see that fact? People don't watch movies to educate themselves they watch them for the entertainment value. People watch the news (which is nothing but propaganda) or documentaries to educate themselves. Movies can be dangerous to people like you... that's a scary thought.