Lorraine Mallinder

'I have a big job to do for my people'

The Journalist (12/22)

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Airlifted out of Kabul in 2021, Zahra Joya has been running a news agency in exile, managing a team of undercover journalists in Afghanistan. Her work has won her a number of awards, but has also created new dangers for the family she left behind.

France: Police killing weighs in the banlieues before run-off vote

Al Jazeera (04/22)

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Tensions in the deprived suburbs around Paris ahead of a high-stakes election that has seen a new wave of support for the far-right. In Beaudottes, where protests were crushed after the recent police killing of a black man, frustrated residents cut off from mainstream society see no reason to vote.

Chagos: Islanders caught in game of political football

Spotlight (07/22)

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The Chagos islanders have waged a decades-long battle with the UK to return to their homeland, which was wrangled from Mauritius in a cut-price independence deal in the 60s and leased to the US as a military base. Now, following a ruling by the UN maritime court last year, Mauritius has planted its flag on the territory. 

Interview with the head of the ICRC in Cairo

Spotlight (06/22)​

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A typical day in the life of Jerôme Fontana, who has been working with victims of armed conflict for the past 23 years, bringing his family to live in 12 different countries - in Asia, Africa and now the Middle East.

Yazidi women and girls still enslaved

The Irish Times (08/21)

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Lahur Talabani was the south London boy who brought the fight to Islamic State in his native Kurdistan, playing a leading role in intelligence and counterterrorism. Now his Surrey-raised cousin wants to boot him out the country.

Internecine feud in Kurdish ruling clan

The Irish Times (08/21)

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Lahur Talabani was the south London boy who brought the fight to Islamic State in his native Kurdistan, playing a leading role in intelligence and counterterrorism. Now his Surrey-raised cousin wants to boot him out the country.

Relatives of family killed in M6 crash thank Irish people

The Irish Times (08/21)

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The story of Karzan Sabah Ahmed and Shahen Qasm, who died with their baby in a crash in Galway. People from across Ireland raised funds to send them home to their family in Erbil.

Kurdistan: a shot at statehood

New Internationalist (07/20)

Foreign aid and oil money have been key to the survival of Kurdistan’s two mafia-like ruling clans, the Barzanis and the Talabanis. And poverty, lots of it. For their success depends on them being the ones with all the cash to splash.

Covid-19 and an IS comeback

The Irish Times (05/20)

Could it happen again? In Mosul, locals still feel the presence of Islamic State, hidden in the cracks and seams of city life. 

Mosul’s new masters

The Irish Times (03/20)

After Isis, came the mafia. In Mosul, a jumbled assortment of Iran-backed militias, known collectively as the Hashd al-Shaabi, compete for their share of the spoils of war.

The vapers of Mosul 

BBC Radio 4 (03/20) @11.14mins

Out on the hustle with three buccaneering entrepreneurs, selling vapes in war-torn Mosul. Moslawis are born entrepreneurs. Given half the chance, they can make their city great again.

Syrian Kurds face bleakest winter 

The Irish Times (03/20)

Syrian Kurds, who fled Turkish bombing last year, adjust to life in an Iraqi camp. Mercenaries have looted, burned and confiscated properties back home. They know they’re never going back.

‘We are only 1,000, but we fight like 10,000.’ 

The Irish Times (12/19)

In the hills of northern Iraq, I meet showman general Hussein Yazdanpanah, whose Iranian Kurdish fighters are fighting against a resurgent Islamic State and the Tehran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militias.

The best weapon against war in Iraq is a waistcoat

The Irish Times (10/19)

For the dapper young men at Mr Erbil, style is survival. In their emporium of hip, espressos are sipped and style flaunted as chaos and menace swirl outside. No talk of religion or politics permitted.

‘You live with these men as a slave. It’s free for them to do anything’

The Irish Times (10/19)

Naveen Rasho endured five years of hell at the hands of Islamic State. She survived the fall of the caliphate in Baghuz, only to face the fresh horror of detention at Al Hawl camp in Syria with her captor’s three brides.

Cherry: A life stranger than fiction

Spotlight (07/19)

Nico Walker served as an army medic in Iraq’s ‘Triangle of Death’. Returning home with severe PTSD, he turned to heroin and bank robberies. Now in prison, he has reinvented himself as a bestselling novelist.

Lives shattered, Syria’s Kurds flee to Iraq

The Irish Times (10/19)

Dependent on what she describes as a “spider’s web” of drivers and smugglers, Gulistan and her family pushed blindly through the confusion of an eight-year civil war that had recently taken yet another deadly turn.

Global Ear: Dé:Nash

The Wire (08/19)

Hungarian rapper Dé:Nash mines his country’s collective consciousness, satirising the Fidesz regime’s use of ancient legend, historical grievances and conspiracy theories to craft a new national narrative.