TWD Cited by Columbia University Press

New York- My work in Iraq during the war against IS for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point is cited (pp. 29, 33) in this new volume Surviving the Islamic State by Austin Knuppe, an academic at Utah State University. Published yesterday by Columbia University Press here in New York, rather than a military history of the campaign to liberate lands occupied by transnational salafi-takfiri forces that had subsumed much of northern and western Iraq by June 2014 (hard to believe this was now over a decade ago), Knuppe’s work centres on how ordinary Iraqis survived this genocidal nightmare that few here in the West a decade on still seem to grasp the severity of.

Working on both sides of the Sykes-Picot line during virtually the entirety of this period, I was always curious to ask Iraqis and Syrians alike how exactly did they live through this brutal occupation as successive governorates were liberated. The stories they would tell of adapting and surviving would reinstill my faith in the power of the human spirit while the anecdote of vast public executions and genocide told of humankind’s darkest facets. I’m pleased my fieldwork played a small part in the production of this important

Iraqi IDP families flee areas under IS occupation 6 years ago in Kirkuk governorate. Above them are martyrdom posters of beloved Iraqi military men who perished in the fight to liberate districts that had fallen to enemy forces in 2014. ©2018 Derek Henry Flood