Oil Pipeline, Basra, Iraq, 2012

A shepherd walks with sheep near a South Oil Company pipeline in Basra, Iraq, 2012.
The departure of the United States from Iraq in 2011 left behind a fragile democracy fractured by Sunni and Shia sectarian tensions. While Iraqis attempt to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the war, devastating suicide bombings continue to bring violent aberrations to daily life. Crude oil production in Iraq is at its highest in decades, generating most of Iraq’s income for public services and infrastructure, although it is steeped in corruption and does little to improve the life of the under privileged. Civilians from low-income families who were caught amidst the violence that the war brought struggle to afford adequate medical treatment for ongoing conditions. Tensions between Iraq’s Kurdish region and Baghdad simmer.

In March 2012, almost four months after a muted end to one of the U.S. longest wars, I travelled through Iraq to explore the legacy of the U.S. led occupation. From Kurdistan to Baghdad, and to the holy Shia city of Najaf and beyond into the oil-rich deserts of Basra, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers converge and flow into the Gulf, I witnessed a country neither at war nor peace.