As we were leaving the camp, I wondered whether refugee and IDP camps are a sign of compassion towards displaced people, or are they signs of how far humans have gone in causing harm to each other?

The unimaginable atrocities inflicted on this city [Mosul] by a group of mercenaries known as ISIL should undoubtedly be considered one of the most horrendous crimes of the twenty-first century.

Once upon a time, displaced people had a time and a place. They had a place in which they made plans about what to do with their future and their lives. Their time and place were prematurely destroyed and stolen from them. These people were then forced to exist in times and places that are not theirs. They were forced to learn the art of living and flourishing in the same empire that stole and destroyed their time and place back home.

In many ways, the language, the sect, and the ethnicity are the IDs in post-U.S. occupation Iraq—the 'new Iraq'.