[Published here July 16, 2019]
Her dark hair was pulled back by a white scrunchie and she had chipped pink polish on her nails. Like any teenager, I thought. But the words she spoke were as far from a carefree teenagedom as you could get.
IS
In Iraq, minority children haunted by ghosts of IS captivity | AFP
[Published here July 14, 2019]
Khanke Displacement Camp (Iraq) (AFP) – Brainwashed and broken, the Islamic State group’s youngest victims are struggling to recover from years of jihadist captivity as they return to their own traumatised minority communities in Iraq.
Agony of Yazidi women torn between IS kids, or return home | AFP
[Published here July 14, 2019]
Baadre (Iraq) (AFP) – Freed after years in jihadist captivity, Jihan faced an agonising ultimatum: abandon her three small children fathered by an Islamic State fighter or risk being shunned by her community.
Born under IS, sick Iraqi children left undocumented, untreated | AFP
[Published here May 16, 2019]
Laylan (Iraq) (AFP) – No documents? No doctor. Without state-issued IDs, Iraqi mothers struggle to have children born under the now-defeated Islamic State group treated for conditions ranging from asthma to epilepsy.
Iraq offers to try foreign IS suspects, for a price | AFP
[Published here April 10, 2019]
Iraq has offered to put on trial hundreds of accused foreign jihadists in Baghdad in exchange for millions of dollars, potentially solving a legal conundrum for Western governments but sparking rights concerns. Continue reading
Yazidi doctor soldiers on in mental battle against IS | AFP
[Published here March 13, 2019]
Dohuk (Iraq) (AFP) – The military fight against the Islamic State group may be nearing an end, but one Yazidi doctor treating survivors is soldiering on against unseen scars the jihadists carved into her community.
Largest IS mass grave yet found outside Syria’s Raqa | AFP
[Published here on February 21, 2019]
Two feet deep, below a plot of farmland outside the Syrian city of Raqa, lies a large and deadly legacy of the Islamic State group: a mass grave holding an estimated 3,500 people.
Civilians stream out of Baghouz | BBC Scotland
I spoke to BBC Scotland’s Isabel Fraser and Gordon Brewer on February 16, 2019 on the deeply disturbing state of civilians fleeing the final Islamic State group pocket of Baghouz in eastern Syria.
Listen in here, with my interview starting around 1:07:00.
Tribal truckers, praying paramedics: mixed bag on last IS front | AFP
[Published here on February 15, 2019]
As destitute civilians stumble out of the Islamic State group’s last enclave in east Syria, a mixed bag of unlikely characters are pitching in to help get them to safety.
In Syria, families flee IS holdout to dust and desperation | AFP
[Published here on February 14, 2019]
The cry echoed across the chalk-dry Syrian plain: “Water!” Within seconds, the truck carrying a few dozen bottles was emptied by parched refugees who had spent the night out in the open.
