[Published here on September 3, 2019]
One man lost his uncle. Another is mourning for two sons. Farmers and herders in Iraq’s Baiji say mines left by the Islamic State group turned their beloved orchards into killing fields.
ISIS
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.
IS chief refers to Syria defeat in first video in five years | AFP
[Co-written with AFP’s Ali Choukeir; published here on April 29, 2019]
Baghdad (AFP) – The Islamic State group’s elusive supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his first purported appearance in five years in a propaganda video released Monday, acknowledging IS’s defeat in the Syrian town of Baghouz while threatening “revenge” attacks.
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.
