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AFP / Safin Hamed

Flesh and blood

Tuesday 16 July 2019

"Her dark hair was pulled back by a white scrunchie and she had chipped pink polish on her nails. Like any teenager, I thought," writes Maya Gebeily, a journalist based in Baghdad. 

"Except the words she spoke were as far from a carefree teenagedom as you could get."

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AFP / Ahmad Muwafaq

A tale of two cities

Friday 24 May 2019

"What I slowly absorbed after a few days in post-IS Mosul -- and its Syrian twin city Raqa a few weeks later -- is that what comes (war) after is infinitely more complex to chart out and to report faithfully," writes Maya Gebeily, who has covered the conflicts in Iraq and Syria over the past several years.

"There is no step-by-step strategy to rebuild a city's spirit. There's no unified command-and-control center.  It's usually not even clear what victory is supposed to look like or when it can be declared."

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  • AFP / Ahmad Al-rubaye
  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Thomas Coex
  • AFP / Ahmad Al-rubaye
  • AFP / Ahmad Al-rubaye

The road to Mosul

Thursday 15 December 2016

"There are only about 80 kilometres (50 miles) between Arbil, the developing capital of the Iraqi Kurdish region, and Mosul, the last remaining Iraqi city held by the Islamic State group," writes Maya Gebeily, a correspondent based in Beirut.

"But as I learned during two weeks covering the Mosul offensive, sometimes it only takes a few dozen kilometers to go from one universe to another, passing surreal worlds along the way."

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