Project Detail: Facing the Islamic State. Fight Peshmerga

Contest:

LuganoPhotoDays 2018



Brand:

LuganoPhotoDays



Author:

Victòria Rovira Casanovas

Status:
Selected

 

Project Info

Facing the Islamic State. Fight Peshmerga

On January 2014, the Islamic State occupied the first city of Iraq: Falluja. Since then, the Peshmerga militias have done an almost unknown and indispensable job in Kurdistan for 4 years: by controlling the front and preventing the occupation of the terrorist group. The militias are risking their lives for the Kurdish population. The Peshmerga have fought against IS from north to south at different front lines with the timely help of other militias and guerrillas.

The Peshmerga are Kurdish combat militias that control and protect Iraq's Kurdish territory. In Kurdish Pêşmerge means "those who face death". Each armed Peshmerga organization is part of a determined political party (PUK and PDK). The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has Peshmerga in both parties. Each political party controls a part of the Kurdish territory of Iraq.

The role of the Peshmerga in this war against the ISIS is to control from the front that the Islamic State does not advance to the Kurdish zone, liberate the areas occupied by them, eliminate and protect the civilian population.

Despite the great work of these militias, with the help of other organizations, the Islamic State has generated serious problems for the civilian population since 2014. Large cities have been destroyed; Thousands of families have had to leave their own homes to end up in displaced people; Thousands of young refugees have had to leave the country to Europe due to the few labor opportunities that the war has generated; Thousands of Yazidi women have been raped, sold and killed, and thousands of people are missing.

This report created in Iraqi Kurdistan for 6 months in 2017, shows us the resistance Peshmerga against ISIS with scenes of training, fighting, control on the front and the consequences of the battle and the problems that this war has generated with images of displaced people, refugees and women kidnapped.

So, the purpose is to narrate who the Peshmerga are, what they have done for four years, against whom they have fought and how and why they have defended their people. In short, his work, his struggle and resistance and his day to day.

And in part, explain what they themselves have not been able to avoid, that is, the problems that ISIS has directly generated for the civilian population, both Kurdish and Iraqi.

Photos