UNEMBEDDED

Kael Alford

Kael was one of the few independent photographers in Baghdad during the US bombing and documented the impact of the war and its aftermath. In the fall of 2003, she rented a room in Ramadi to photograph the resistance as it was first taking shape in the months after the US-led invasion. On her most recent trip, she documented the culture surrounding the second front of insurgents, the Medhi Militia, descendents of the shiite opposition against Saddam Hussein's regime. She made many trips across front lines in Najaf and Sadr City to photograph the Mehdi Militia battles with US forces. 

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Kael Alford 

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  • Demonstrators supporting Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr pray outside the green zone, a heavily fortified compound where the interim Iraqi government and the U.S. embassy are located. The protestors demanded an end to U.S. military actions against al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, during the buildup to the battle in Najaf.
  • A father and his brothers mourn an eight-year-old girl killed when a U.S. missile landed in a busy market in a Shiite neighborhood north of Baghdad. The U.S. bombing lasted twenty-one days, making way for the U.S.-led coalition invasion.
  • Angry residents of Zafrania confront U.S. soldiers guarding an ammunition stockpile after an accident launched a missile that killed people in nearby houses.
  • A woman mourns family members killed when a missile landed on their home. The missile was launched accidentally from an ammunition collection point under U.S. military control.
  • A casket is carried through the streets after a U.S. missile landed on a marketplace.
  • A father shows his hand to snipers as he carries his terrified child across the front line between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army at the wrecked outskirts of the old city.
  • An elderly man, killed in the fighting between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army, is covered with his own cloak by a Najaf resident on the wrecked outskirts of the old city.
  • Soldiers of the Mahdi Army wait in the basement for their rotation in frontline fighting as the building is pummeled by U.S. tank shells.
  • Demonstrators hang a picture of Muqtada al-Sadr’s uncle, Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric who was assassinated for opposing Saddam Hussein, on a wall outside the green zone. The protest was in response to U.S. military actions against Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Thousands of al-Sadr’s supporters participated, including some Iraqi police.
  • Followers of Muqtada al-Sadr pose with a portrait of their leader. The women assist the Mahdi Army by supplying the fighters with food and other support during battles with U.S. forces. They say they are willing to fight for the militia if the need arises.
  • A bride leaves a beauty salon with her face covered; she will not show herself until she reaches the privacy of a family gathering. The Mahdi Army have threatened beauty salon owners advertising pictures of women without their hair covered. Mahdi fighters police neighborhood streets, enforcing strict moral codes.
  • Children at a husseiniya, a center for religious learning, perform a reenactment of a battle between U.S. soldiers and the Mahdi Army. In this scene they carry away the body of a fallen martyr, a young boy who was the first casualty of the fighting.
  • Women friends gather at home while their husbands meet in Sadr City, a stronghold of the conservative Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr and his armed followers, the Mahdi Army.
  • A boy brandishes a toy kalashnikov on a main thoroughfare food market the day after it was heavily damaged forces and the Mahdi Army. U.S. forces blasted the apartment from helicopter gunships.
  • Graffiti marks the wall of an Iraqi police station in the center of Falluja before the two U.S. offensives against insurgents left the city in ruins. A broken city water pipe has flooded the street.
  • Women walk past the name of Imam Hussein, the son of Imam Ali, founderof Shia Islam, scrawled on a wall. Under Saddam Hussein, such a statement of Shiite faith and solidarity would have been viewed as a threat to the unity of the state. Since the U.S. invasion, Sadr City has become an open book of religious and political graffiti.
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