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Paul Taggart | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1980 (age 41–42) |
| Occupation | Photographer, writer |
Paul Taggart (born 1980) is an American photographer and writer best known for his photographs from the Middle East and Africa.
Taggart was one of the few unembedded western journalists to cover the month-long battle and siege of Najaf, Iraq in 2004 between the Mahdi Militia and the coalition forces. Other prominent news stories Taggart has covered have been Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan in 2007 and the dual bombing of her convoy after leaving the airport, the Tsunami in Banda Aceh, the 2005 famine in Niger, the 2005 elections in Liberia, the 2006 war in Lebanon, and the 3-month-long siege of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon in the summer of 2007.
Taggart's work has appeared in Newsweek , The New York Times , U.S. News & World Report , The Boston Globe , National Geographic Adventure, and The Times of London .
In October 2004, Taggart was kidnapped while working in Sadr City outside of Baghdad, Iraq, and held hostage for three days before being released as a result of pleas from Muqtada Al Sadr. [1]
Sadr City, formerly known as Al-Thawra and Saddam City, is a suburb district of the city of Baghdad, Iraq. It was built in 1959 by Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim and later unofficially renamed Sadr City after Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr.
The occupation of Iraq is characterized by a large United States military deployment on Iraqi territory, beginning with the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March 2003 which overthrew the Ba'ath Party government of Saddam Hussein and ending with the departure of US troops from the country in 2011. Troops for the invasion came primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, but 29 other nations also provided some troops, and there were varying levels of assistance from Japan and other countries.
The following is a timeline of major events during the Iraq War, following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Muqtada al-Sadr is an Iraqi politician and militia leader. He is the leader of the Sadrist Movement and the leader of the Peace Companies, a successor to the militia he had previously led during the American military presence in Iraq, the "Mahdi Army." In 2018, he joined his Sadrist political party to the Saairun alliance, which won the highest number of seats in the 2018 and 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections.
The Peace Companies are an Iraqi armed group linked to Iraq's Shia community. They are a 2014 revival of the Mahdi Army that was created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003 and disbanded in 2008.
After the invasion of Iraq was completed and the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled in May 2003, the Iraqi insurgency began. The 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency lasted until early 2006, when it escalated from an insurgency to a civil war, which became the most violent phase of the Iraq War.
The Black Banner Organisation was an Iraqi guerrilla organization that battled multinational troops in Iraq. The organization's ideology was believed to be radical Sunni Islamism.
Events in the year 2005 in Iraq.
Members of the Iraqi insurgency began taking foreign hostages in Iraq beginning in April 2004. Since then, in a dramatic instance of Islamist kidnapping they have taken captive more than 200 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis; among them, dozens of hostages were killed and others rescued or freed. In 2004, executions of captives were often filmed, and many were beheaded. However, the number of the recorded killings decreased significantly. Many hostages remain missing with no clue as to their whereabouts. The United States Department of State Hostage Working Group was organized by the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad, in the summer of 2004 to monitor foreign hostages in Iraq.
Micah Garen is an American documentary filmmaker and journalist whose work has focused on conflict zones in the Middle East and Afghanistan. He is notable for surviving a kidnapping ordeal in Iraq in 2004. He wrote a book about the kidnapping incident which included his confinement as well as the efforts of friends and relatives to secure his release; according to a report in Kirkus Reviews, the book was "extraordinarily compelling" and "gripping." In addition, Garen is a prize-winning photographer. He has written for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, The New York Times and other publications. Micah Garen and Marie-Helene Carleton have directed four documentaries for Al Jazeera's Correspondent series, including Identity and Exile: an American's struggle with Zionism featuring photojournalist Matthew Cassel. The film was awarded the top Golden Nymph prize at the Monte Carlo Television Festival in 2014. Garen has made a number of short documentaries, including one describing the lives of Egyptian women during the political upheavals in 2011 one on an American airman killed in Afghanistan and one on refugees fleeing Turkey to Greece by boat. With Marie-Hélène Carleton, Garen is working on a feature documentary from Iraq entitled The Road to Nasiriyah which was selected for Film Independent's inaugural documentary lab in 2011. Garen founded ScreeningRoom in 2015, an online community for filmmakers with tools including collaborative feedback on cuts, festival submissions and film grants.
The Battle of Najaf was fought between United States and Iraqi forces on one side and the Islamist Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr on the other in the Iraqi city of Najaf in August 2004.
The Iraq spring fighting of 2004 was a series of operational offensives and various major engagements during the Iraq War. It was a turning point in the war: before, the conflict was simply US/Coalition versus insurgents, but the Spring Fighting marked the entrance of militias and religiously based militant Iraqi groups, such as the Mahdi Army into the arena of conflict.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq or Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, officially known as Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn or TQJBR ، هو العراق و الإسلام السني و الجهادية التنظيم affiliated with al-Qaeda, for two years.
Special Groups (SGs) is a designation given by the United States military to the cell-based Shi'a paramilitary organizations operating within Iraq, backed by Iran. According to the United States these groups are funded, trained, and armed by the Iranian Quds Force, part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to the United States Department of Defense, 603 American troops in total were confirmed to have been killed by IRGC-backed Shia militias during the Iraq War.
Qais Hadi Sayed Hasan al-Khazali is best known as the founder and leader of the Iran-backed Special Groups in Iraq from June 2006 until his capture by British forces in March 2007. As head of the Special Groups, Khazali directed arms shipment, formation of squads to participate in fighting, and insurgent operations, most notably the 20 January 2007 attack on American forces in Karbala. A former follower of Muqtada al-Sadr, he was expelled from the Mahdi Army in 2004 for giving "unauthorized orders" and founded his own group: Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) also known as the "Khazali network" that was later designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. Department of State. During his incarceration, Akram al-Kaabi became acting commander of the organization until his release.
Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, also known as the Khazali Network, is a radical Iraqi Shi'a political party and paramilitary group active in the Iraqi insurgency and Syrian Civil War. During the Iraq War it was known as Iraq's largest "Special Group", and is now part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of Shi’ite militias that are close to Iran.
The 23rd Arab League Summit was the third one held in Baghdad and the first one since 1990, before the start of the Gulf War. The decision to grant the host rights to Iraq was made at the previous summit in Sirte. Among the subjects discussed were the Iraqi debts to its neighbors and the uprising in Syria. The summit marked the first time since the Invasion of Kuwait that an acting Emir paid a visit to Iraq. The summit was also notable as being the first held since the beginning of the Arab Spring, during which the governments of several member states were overthrown by popular revolutions.
Al-Sadr Online was the official website of the High Board for Media of Al-Sadr's Office. The High Board is the media organization of Muqtada Al-Sadr, a Shia Muslim Iraqi religious and political leader. The site, which commenced operation in 2007, performs several functions in support of Sadrist objectives. The site's distinct format includes a section in which Al-Sadr offers religious opinions in response to queries from site followers. Al-Sadr Online publishes news about Sadrist political, social, and religious activities in southern Iraq and the Arab world. In addition, the Board's staff also posts commentary on issues pertaining to Iraqi and pan-Arab politics as well as some international news. The site posts numerous links to pages of organizations sympathetic to the Sadrist Movement, many of which are based in Iran and Lebanon. Al-Sadr Online posts most of its content in Arabic, though it does maintain a less robust English page.
The Battle of Baghdad International Airport was a battle fought primarily between US Army truck drivers, Air Defense Artillery, Armor, Military Police, Engineers and miscellaneous logistics personnel and al Sadr's Mahdi Army on Easter Sunday, April 11, 2004, along the Southwest side of the Baghdad International Airport wall commonly referred to as Engineer Village. That section of Baghdad International Airport was home to numerous Engineer units, in particular the 389th Combat Engineers, a chow hall, and a convoy marshaling area.
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