Sara Miran, a Kurdish American real estate developer, was kidnapped while she was working in Iraq in 2014. She was held hostage by an Iranian-backed militia and eventually escaped with the help of a metal spoon. Miran’s harrowing story had been buried among secret Iranian documents, which were then leaked to The Intercept. On a […]
Iraq
Posted inEditor's Pick
Breathe In
“It wasn’t until after I returned from Iraq that I found out what all was tossed into those burn pits at The Dump.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Reluctant Bomb Technicians of Sinjar
“The three of them had become part of a team that would clear the land they grew up on of the death ISIS had strewn there, beginning to reclaim it for Iraq’s displaced Yazidis to one day return home.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What I Wish I’d Known About Sexual Assault in the Military
Sandra Sidi recalls the rampant sexual assault and harassment she and other female colleagues experienced when she worked as a civilian public affairs analyst for the military in Iraq in 2007.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Essays & Criticism, Featured
A Second Passport
Normally, kibbutz volunteers visit Israel and return home. Pam Mandel went on to Egypt, and kept going . . .
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Featured, Story
A Second Passport
Normally, kibbutz volunteers visit Israel and return home. Pam Mandel went on to Egypt, and kept going . . .
Posted inHighlight, History, Nonfiction, Quotes
War, What is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing
“Across these years, hundreds of thousands of young men and women signed on in good faith and served in the lower and middle ranks. They did not make policy. They lived within it.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The ISIS Files
On five trips to Iraq, Rukmini Callimachi and a team of other New York Times journalists scoured files and other papers left behind by the Islamic State, which help explain how the so-called Caliphate had been able to stay in power there for a number of years. The impression left behind? That ISIS’s penchant for […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Tales of War and Redemption
“The violence I have seen has left me feeling hollowed out, unable to gild all the agony with some beautiful meaning.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Uncounted
A multi-media investigative report on the vast discrepancy between the actual number of Iraqi civilians killed by American-led coalition airstrikes against ISIS, and the number the coalition itself reports. In addition to uncovering likely truer math — for instance, while the coalition says 1 in 157 air strikes have killed civilians, reporters Azmat Khan and […]