Journey to Qandil mountains, the PKK main base in Iraq

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Since I started reporting from Iraq and Syria, I always wanted to go to Qandil. Many Kurdish fighters told me about this 28 miles long valley which has become the PKK main headquarter in Northern Iraq. Their stories involved tunnels digged deep into the ground, camouflage training camps, a lot of politics. All of them were sure Qandil is impossible to penetrate. All tales involved a kind of a magical element.

The PKK has been labelled a terrorist organization by the Turkish government and many Western countries, including the US. The PKK picked up an armed struggle in 1984 and started a civil war against Ankara claiming for an autonomous State in which the Kurds will be free. At least 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, died during the conflict.

A lot of things has changed since, starting from the geo-political scenario and alliances on the ground.  The global changes imposed a renovation even within the organization which through the past 40 years changed mentality and somehow beliefs. The first main adjustment arrived when the PKK leader and co-founder Abdullah Ocalan, was arrested in Nairobi in 1999. I wrote about it in an article for War Is Boring.

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Women in war, some changes on the battlefield

Hello everyone,

I have not been updating the blog for a while. I am sorry about that. The good news is I have been working on several new projects, some of those I hope to show you quite soon.

First of all let me tell you what I have been producing lately. For the website War Is Boring I wrote about Maria Giulia Sergio, aka Fatima. The 27 years-old became the first known Italian woman who has joined ISIS. She left her home town, few miles from Milan, in October 2014, and fled to Syria, where now she is a proud Jihadi bride. While living in the Islamic State she tried to convince her family to join her. Her parents and sister got arrested in one of the most important anti-terrorist operation against IS in Italy. If you want to know about her story, this is the link.

In the meantime I gathered even more evidence on ISIS women fighting on the front lines.  I have been showed a picture of women killed on the battlefields around Kobane, at the height of the fight. The person who took this picture doesn’t want it to go public. They were dressed in uniform and not wearing a niqab, they tried to blend in with male jihadi. There are three bodies amongst a group of seven. Also other YPG foreign fighters claimed to have a killed women fighting with Daesh. I will keep you updated on that.

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“Inform as well as influence.” Why Hersh could be right about the Osama Bin Laden’s raid.

The US government and the CIA have a long history of developing cover stories. In the past 67 years Langley made up alternative versions of what happened on the ground on numerous occasions.  In my intel class at Columbia, our professor used to repeat one thing about leaks: “Inform as well as influence.” That should say it all.

Seymour Hersh is under attack by many other reporters for his 10,000 word long article on The killing of Osama Bin Laden.. Some of them are trying to discredit his story.

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Benedetta Argentieri

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