[Published here November 13, 2020]
Shredded tarp flutters from the metal frames of what were once thousands of tent homes. After five years hosting displaced Iraqis, the vast camp was emptied in under 48 hours.
Continue readingIslamic State group
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.
Despite full reservoirs, Iraq water woes far from over | AFP
[Published here May 1, 2019]
Al-Mashahada (Iraq) (AFP) – After plentiful winter rains, Iraq is heading into summer with overflowing reservoirs and lush marshes. But don’t be fooled, observers warn: its water woes and related protests are not over.
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
After IS, Mosul tackles another terror: super-resistant bacteria | AFP
[Published here on March 7, 2019]
Mosul (Iraq) (AFP) – Explosives left behind by the Islamic State group in Iraq’s Mosul took 12-year-old Abdallah’s left leg, but another kind of terror may cost him his arm: antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
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.
