Escape from ISIS
When jihadists from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) invaded the Sinjar region of northern Iraq in 2014 they committed genocide against the Yazidi population. One Yazidi family, the Chattos, survived their onslaught.
The Kurdish Village that Rose from the Dead
In the 1980s Kulajo gave unstinting support to the Kurdish resistance and for this its people were punished by Saddam Hussein. Villagers were transported to prison camps and many were later executed. Yet some lived to tell extraordinary stories of survival.
‘Iraqi officers took our husbands, sons and fathers, and wouldn’t even let us say goodbye’
MAHROOB MOHAMMED NAWKHAS from Kulajo was told by Iraqi soldiers her family would be rehoused in a government collective town. Instead they took them to a prison camp.
‘Iraqi soldiers struck the young men in front of their parents with a metal hose’
After Iraqi jets gassed Kurdish peshmerga strongholds in the Gara mountains, 99 men from Guze village were rounded up and executed. AISHA HAJI SALAM describes how her two sons were taken from her and never seen again.
‘My brother begged for Allah’s help as policemen took him away’
Death was a constant threat for the Kurdish villagers held in detention camps during Anfal. FATIMA KHURSHEED MAHMOUD describes how many of her relatives, including her father and brother, never returned from Iraqi captivity.
‘My lost boys and girls visit me in dreams’
The gassing of Goptapa village on the banks of the Lesser Zab river was the most deadly chemical attack after Halabja. AISHA ISMAEL ALI remains deeply disturbed by the loss of five of her six children in the attack.
‘Prisoners were forced to cover corpses with sand, yet the dogs dug them up’
Villagers from JALEMORT, located in the Lesser Zab valley, remember how they were attacked by the Iraqi army and then imprisoned in the southern deserts where many died.
‘The prison guard said, “The wolf took your men”’
“Welcome to Hell” read the sign over the entrance to Nugra Salman, the Iraqi desert prison close to the border with Saudi Arabia. MIRIAM RASHID MAHMOUD remembers how starving children were beaten unconscious by the guards there.
‘Anyone could be tortured: it made no difference if you were 13 or 70 years old’
When the Iraqis gassed villages just south of the Turkish border, close-knit Kurdish communities fragmented. SHUKRI HASI ABDULLAH, who was from Guze village in the Gara mountains, says it was everyone for himself.
‘All my relatives were killed and now my children only have me’
Kani Bee in the Lesser Zab valley lost 57 people during Anfal. ALFIA HAMZA QADIR was preparing a meal for peshmerga guests when she was warned Iraqi soldiers were approaching her home.
‘I told the Iraqis my children were dying of thirst and they said, “Your children deserve to die”’
When the Iraqis invaded the northern Kurdish region of Bahdinan, they imprisoned civilians in the Nizarka fort in Duhok. KHALAFET SULAIMAN DAWOOD describes how her husband, four brothers and four cousins were driven away at night. It was the last time she saw them.
‘The Iraqis used to say, “Even your donkeys are peshmerga”’
Those living in the rural areas of Kurdistan risked imprisonment for being suspected “saboteurs.” A farmer, HAMAD AMIN MOHAMMED was jailed for four years by Saddam's regime because he lived in the peshmerga stronghold of Haladin.
