For two years, Iraq’s mass protest movement has been plagued by unsolved murders. As October’s election nears, they are making common cause with those who previously opposed them.
Ehab was killed in his car. Abbas was shot on his way to a funeral. Zahra faces constant death threats. In Iraq, young activists are getting hunted down, one by one.
Though the battle to remove Trump from office is over, the war on truth is still being waged on other fronts, with Germany the hub of QAnon fantasists outside the Anglosphere.
The terror group has lost its land, but not its ability to wage a war of terror and intimidation, and the Iraqi government’s corruption is helping it recruit.
Der Gazastreifen gleicht einem Freiluftgefängnis: Die Bewohner können das Gebiet nur schwer verlassen, von außen darf kaum jemand hinein. Studierende lernen unter extremen Bedingungen – und träumen von der Freiheit.
Eventually the stench of death was too much even for ISIS. They covered it, mined it. The Iraqi government won’t touch it. The families of the disappeared have no place to turn.
Bitter cold, few comforts, civilians that give their position away and no end in sight for the Ukrainian soldiers pitched against separatists backed by Russia.
In der philippinischen Stadt Marawi kämpft die Armee gegen islamistische Rebellen. Auf dem angrenzenden Campus geht der Uni-Betrieb weiter – an den Lärm der Flugzeuge und Bomben haben sich die Studenten gewöhnt.
The crackdown on drugs is a hallmark of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration. But as the death tolls mounts, many Filipinos are speaking out – including the Catholic Church, one of the country’s most powerful institutions.
An ISIS offshoot spreads terror in the Philippines by taking over the city of Marawi on the island of Mindanao in 2017. As the military tries to retake the city, a deadly siege ensues.
After the terror of ISIS, returning home is still a distant prospect for thousands of Yazidis. Now they have become pawns as Baghdad and Erbil bicker over their homeland of Sinjar.
Der “Islamische Staat” zerstörte die Universität von Mossul, die zweitgrößte des Irak. Dozenten und Studenten machten trotzdem weiter – im Exil. Jetzt wollen sie zurückkehren.
Iraqi prime minister Haider Al Abadi declared the city of Mosul liberated in July 2017. But that diesn’t mean life has returned to normal for its residents — or for the men who fought to reclaim it from ISIL.
The plight of the Yazidis brought the United States back into the Iraq War when Obama moved to save them on Mount Sinjar. But three years on, they’ve got little hope of going home.
And estimated 400,000 civilians remained in the ancient city centre as Iraqi forces closed in on ISIS in Mosul. Human shields in the hands of a brutal terror group.
As the ‘final offensive’ to retake the western half of the city begins, the underground networks of ISIS continue to attack in the ‘liberated’ eastern half.
When an elderly man bursts into tears after realising that ISIL’s reign of terror has come to an end in his neighbourhood, one soldier walks up to embrace him, while another offers him a cigarette.
The mosque contained what Muslims and Christians believe was the tomb of Jonah. It also held a shrine said to have contained a tooth from the whale that, according to Islamic, Christian and Jewish scripture, carried Jonah inside it for three days.
As Iraqi forces in Mosul engage in some of the fiercest fighting yet against ISIL, Florian Neuhof takes a look at life inside the Qayyarah Air Field West – a key launching pad as anti-ISIL coalition forces seek to flush the extremists out of their last Iraqi stronghold.
Families in liberated parts of Mosul are still exposed to the dangers of war, but fear their suffering will be even worse in the displacement camps which are already beyond capacity.
The site of the ancient city of Nimrud was destroyed and plundered by ISIS, just one of the region’s archeological treasures to fall victim to the terror group.
Once mistrusted, Iraq’s Special Operations Forces have become viewed as heroes for their success in defeating ISIL. Time spent with the Golden Division as they battle to liberate Mosul in their toughest fight yet.
As Baghdad is rocked by deadly explosions and political chaos, “drifting” is an increasingly popular way for young men in the Iraqi capital to let off steam.
In Qayyarah, a town on the Tigris crucial to the recapture of Mosul, residents celebrate being freed from ISIL but now suffer the health effects from the extremist’s scorched earth policy.
With thousands of displaced families in Fallujah escaping the horrors of ISIL, the Kurdish town of Shaqlawa has seen its population swell – yet still welcomes the Sunni Arabs afraid of sectarian hatred in Iraq’s south.
Many spent thousands of dollars on the perilous journey to Europe only to find themselves on a flight back to Iraq a few months later, their dreams of a better life away from war and upheaval shattered by the realities of the refugee crisis.
While both Iraq’s Kurdish fighters and Shiite militias played a key role in blunting and then reversing ISIL’s surge in Iraq, relations have been shaky from the outset.
High rates of female genital mutilation set Iraqi Kurdistan apart from the rest of the country. More than the men, it is the women who keep the cruel tradition alive. One of them has set out to change that.
The Arta FM station strives to remain impartial, and focuses its reporting not on the war, but on the everyday lives of people living in Rojava, as the autonomous region in northern Syria is known.
With Turkey enforcing an economic blockade on Kurdish-controlled areas neighbouring the extremists’ stronghold, residents have little choice but to cross over into the relatively prosperous city.