Ahmed is an architect who came back to his hometown of Bartella to help rebuild it. The city had been recently liberated from ISIS amid fierce fighting, leaving most buildings bullet-ridden and heavily damaged. Most of the largely Christian population, including Ahmed fled to nearby Kurdistan before ISIS extremists took…
Ostblog Posts
Soran from Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan) moved to the UK in 2000. He wanted to avoid military service in the Iraqi army, which apparently was like hell on earth for Kurds at the time. According to Soran, Iraqi generals used to send Kurdish conscripts to the most dangerous posts, and many…
Adnan, who earns his money selling fruit in the centre of Erbil, is really into dressing sharp. In his free time he likes to go shopping, pose in a suit, tie and pocket square, and upload his shots on social media. There has been a movement of guys dressing like…
These two old Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers were stationed to guard the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s former mountain palace in Northern Iraq in May 2017. While younger Peshmerga were fighting the new threat, radical Islamism in the guise of ISIS, they kept watch on their deceased Iraqi foe’s old hideout. They…
This old lady and kid are part of several Yazidi refugee families who found refuge in the changing rooms of an old swimming pool in the small town of Sarsink. They had managed to flee from ISIS who had conquered their native Sinjar in the summer of 2014. The rather…