Peter van Agtmael Bullet holes in a wall after a deadly raid. Alpha Company of 1-17, 172nd Stryker Brigade was
on a joint all-night operation to search ten houses. I was down the street with the company commander (...)
when we heard a single burst from a machine gun. There was a pause and then the air was choked with gunfire. We ran toward the shooting. A soldier, wounded and shivering, was being carried into a Stryker. The house swirled with American and Iraqi troops. Men and boys in their pajamas were lined up squatting against the wall, their arms tied behind their backs. Mosul, Iraq. 2006. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael IRAQ. Mosul. 2006. I was sleeping in a nearby Army base when the echo of an explosion from Mosul startled me
awake. I walked over to the motor pool as a column of Stryker armored vehicles rolled i (...)
n. A
few men hurried past me, their faces tightly drawn. I joined the next patrol heading into town
and was told there had been a suicide bombing. Nine people had been killed and twenty-three
wounded in a crowded café during the breakfast hour. The Strykers stopped down the street
from the blast site, and we walked to the gaping hole in the block of buildings. The soldiers had
stopped by the Abu-Ali restaurant many times for sugary tea or a chat with the friendly owner.
Now bits of flesh and scorched food, splinters of furniture and crockery choked the floor. The
streets were empty except for a few curious bystanders. The patrol moved to the hospital to
check on the victims. Ali, the owner, lay on one of the beds. Only his nose and lips were visible
beneath the bandages, and they were caked in dried blood. He did not survive the day. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael IRAQ. Dohuk. 2015. An NPU (an Assyrian Christian political party) training course for the senior Non Commission Officers of their small militia. The training is being conducted by 'James,' a forme (...)
r U.S. Army soldier and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan under the auspices of the Sons of Liberty. This training exercise concentrates on house clearance and uses airsoft guns. Matthew van Dyke is pictured peering out. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael IRAQ. Rawa. 2006. Sergeant Jackson rested in the living room while his platoon searched the rest of the house for a
suspected insurgent. They found nothing suspicious, and the commander assumed he (...)
had received
bad intelligence. Most of the raids I witnessed were dry holes. Before leaving, the commanding
officer would occasionally compensate for damage by pressing a wad of soiled dinars or dollars
into wary hands. Usually the platoon would leave without an apology to continue searching for their
target, or return to base before insurgents had the chance to organize and attack. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael IRAQ. Mosul. 2017. Administration officials outside of a destroyed building of Mosul University after it was destroyed and set on fire by airstrikes and fleeing ISIS fighters. Parts of the univers (...)
ity were used as a headquarters for ISIS fighters. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael A teenager stopped for suspicious behavior in Rawa, a violent Sunni town in Anbar Province
near the Syrian border. He had scowled at a passing Stryker column. One of the gunners yelled
for the co (...)
nvoy to stop and leapt out of the hatch. He pointed his carbine at the boy’s head and
screamed at him in English to lie on the ground. The Iraqi stood uncomprehending and shaking,
his arms thrust high into the air. He was shoved into the dirt and searched. Nothing was found
on him. The commander of the American unit wanted to investigate further and demanded to be
taken to the young man’s house. It was also clear of contraband. Rawa, Iraq. 2006. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael IRAQ. Mosul. 2006. An American medic treats a civilian wounded by the explosion of a roadside bomb that had just missed our
patrol. The man had been driving with his wife and brother in an old hat (...)
chback. The commander ordered
our patrol to stop. The medic jumped out of the Stryker and ran to the ruined car, followed by several
soldiers. They found the driver slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding from multiple wounds. The other
passengers were untouched. Private Johnson laid the patient on the ground and bandaged him up. The
other soldiers pointed their rifles in his direction, lighting the scene with high-powered flashlights attached
to the muzzles. During the short ride to the hospital, he muttered prayers and stared at his bloodied hand. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael This boy, temporarily deranged by the sudden violence, leaped at an American soldier. His face
was smashed by a rifle butt, his hands were tied, and he was forced to kneel against the wall.
As th (...)
e house was searched his eyes locked forward, his expression frozen in place. In the next
room a woman and two young boys were curled together, trembling. When I caught them in the
glare of my headlamp, they shrieked and moaned. An Iraqi interpreter went in to question one of
the boys. He whispered back, and the soldiers started digging in the garden. No weapons were
found but bomb-making instructions were discovered in the house. The aftermath of a violent raid. An American soldier had been wounded, an insurgent killed.Mosul, Iraq. 2006. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael IRAQ. Outside Mosul. 2006.
Soldiers raided a hamlet on the outskirts of Mosul after midnight on a winter weekend. Iraqi
soldiers guarded the perimeter while a line of American soldiers moved up (...)
silently outside each
house. A soldier kicked in the door and stood aside. The others entered with weapons raised,
scanning the room rapidly with their flashlights and yelling commands in English and broken
Arabic. A young family had been sleeping, and the dirt floor was a tangle of blankets and thin
mattresses. A soldier grabbed the Iraqi closest to the door and shoved him against the wall,
forcing his arms behind his back. As he held his prisoner there, the soldier complained that the
scene was bound to be misrepresented by a photograph taken out of context. A second Iraqi
awoke with a start and fumbled for something under the blanket. Hawk, the unit’s Kurdish
interpreter, took several long steps and punched him sharply in the face, dazing him. Another
soldier slammed him to the ground. A search of the compound turned up a cache of weapons
and explosive materials. Three men were detained. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael IRAQ. Baghdad. 2010. Local Sheikhs arrive at the handover of a neighborhood from the Americans to the Iraqi Army.
The ceremony included the presentation of captured weaponry and a hand-to-hand com (...)
bat
demonstration by Iraqi soldiers. The event was one of several marking the end of the American
combat mission in Iraq, and the transition from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New
Dawn.” The fifty thousand remaining soldiers were to advise the Iraqi Army. Although the
combat role was officially ending, day-to-day operations by American soldiers remained largely
unchanged. Still, their role had diminished substantially as violence decreased and the Iraqi
government exercised its sovereignty. The American government made little mention of the
transition, but American TV news briefly heralded it as the end of the war. In December 2011,
all American soldiers were withdrawn from Iraq after the Obama administration failed to make
a security agreement with the Iraqi government. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael The Emergency NGO hospital in Erbil which treats casualties from the battle of Mosul. Elham, 10, blast injury sharped penetrated abdomen and femur. She is playing with an Italian nurse who tried to (...)
keep the spirits up of the patients. Erbil. Iraq (Kurdistan). 2017. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos
Peter van Agtmael The wary inhabitants of this isolated village in Nineveh had never seen an American patrol, and
asked what country they were from. They had heard of America, and served sugary tea to the
soldiers (...)
but otherwise kept their distance. The troops took turns riding the donkey and posed
for pictures holding lambs. In the Bible, Nineveh is described as a wicked city. God sent the
prophet Jonah to preach there, and its inhabitants repented. God decided to spare the city. Nineveh, Iraq. 2006. © Peter van Agtmael | Magnum Photos