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Location Halabja, Iraq<\/p>\n
Disaster Wildfires, 2025<\/p>\n
Bilal Mukhtar is a teacher living in Halabja, in the Hawraman region of Iraq\u2019s autonomous Kurdistan region. Wildfires are breaking out here with increasing frequency, caused by natural events and compounded by hotter and drier weather. Iraq is experiencing its worst drought in nearly a century. Climate change makes <\/a>drought and wildfire<\/a> in Iraq more likely. <\/p>\n The 17th of August. That was the day the fire started. Ari worked in a kebab shop. After he came back from work, he had a shower. He lives with Mum and Dad and another sister, she\u2019s still at home. He took a shower and he took his bag and he went to the gym because he was a very sporty person. Before he started to workout, he got a phone call from friends saying there\u2019s a fire that\u2019s breaking out and can you come. So he went.<\/p>\n Bilal Mukhtar holding a picture of his brother Ari. Photograph: Hannah Lynch<\/p>\n Four years earlier Ari had started an organisation to fight wildfires with his best friends.<\/p>\n They shared their phone numbers around Halabja, saying if wildfires break out, let us know. It\u2019s a traditional thing in Halabja. When something, somewhere catches on fire, the other villagers, other tribes, when they hear the news, we all go automatically to help to control the fire. The communities, they know, the first thing we need to do is take action. We take individual action. We do something about it. And Ari was always volunteering and helping everybody in the community.<\/p>\n We are four sisters and three brothers, and Ari was the third brother. Since he was a child, he was very beautiful. We called him suruspi [white and red] because he had fair hair and green eyes. He was very well loved by Mum and Dad. His brothers and sisters, we loved him. He was always volunteering and helping everybody in the community. Especially guests, strangers, he was loving of strangers too. His love and passion was unconditional towards everybody.<\/p>\n He really loved nature as well. He used to always care about the forests and the trees. He was a bird lover too. He was caring for birds and animals. When he was young, we used to have harsh winters with snow covering everything and it was very hard for birds to find food. He would take his own pocket money to go and buy food for the birds and take it to Hawraman, the mountainous areas, to feed the birds. He used to save food at home to take it out for stray dogs and other animals, cats.<\/p>\n \u2018They did it in the very old-fashioned way \u2026 you pick up the big branch of a tree, with the leaves still on, and you beat the flames with it.\u2019 Photograph: Fariq Faraj Mahmood\/Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n But the fire group had no safety, nothing, no training. They didn\u2019t have safety equipment or even fire resistant clothes. They just did it in the very old-fashioned way like they used to do in the villages; you pick up the big branch of a tree, with the leaves still on, and you beat the flames with it. That\u2019s the main way of putting out the flames. The only machine they use is a blower which runs on petrol. They are fairly commonly used here to put out fires. It is really a leaf blower in a backpack, with the fuel tank incorporated. You use it to prevent a fire from spreading by blowing the flames back.<\/p>\n They had fought many fires. A couple of times Ari got injured, he got burned by wildfire, but he hid it at home. He didn\u2019t want to let the family see it because he was worried we would try to stop him from doing this kind of work, and of course he didn\u2019t want to cause us stress or worry.<\/p>\n I was always begging him, as a big brother, saying: \u201cPlease be careful with yourself, you don\u2019t have the right equipment.\u201d He said: \u201cHow can I see birds actually get burned and dying? I\u2019m not more important than them. I need to be there for them.\u201d<\/p>\n This time the fire was near a village called Mordin, not far from here, 45 minutes. It\u2019s a gravel road. You go by motorbike. In that area there is no phone reception.<\/p>\n Smoke rising from the hills as firefighting efforts continue for the second day in the forests of Halabja, Iraq on 18 August 2025. Photograph: Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n I was looking at social media and there was news about fires breaking out in this area and my heart sank. I just had a feeling, where is Ari? I called him. His phone was off. I felt it in my heart that something was going to happen to Ari.<\/p>\n My uncle called me. He wanted Ari to take him to a place where there is a sulphur spring that\u2019s good for your skin, but Ari was not answering his phone. I said: \u201cYes, I\u2019ve been trying to call him and he\u2019s not answering.\u201d<\/p>\n About 7 o\u2019clock, I checked social media and saw the news: \u201cAri\u2019s been burned, but please, all of us, let\u2019s pray for him because he\u2019s still alive.\u201d His friends called me, they said: \u201cSomething happened, but don\u2019t panic, he\u2019s still alive. It\u2019s not that severe.\u201d But I was really worrying because they were taking him to Sulaimani\u2019s emergency hospital, not to our local hospital, and I knew that meant it must be really serious.<\/p>\n I got to the hospital, I nearly went crazy, asking, where\u2019s all the doctors, why are they not around? But they had already given up. They told us that 95% of his body had been burned. He had been suddenly surrounded by flames. His blower device caught on fire, and it burned his body. His burns were severe, 95% of his body. There was no chance he could survive.<\/p>\n \u2018Every year we have one fire after another. If we continue like this, in a few years, we will lose all the trees and forests.\u2019 Photograph: Fariq Faraj Mahmood\/Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The doctors explained that he would stop breathing soon. And he did. I spoke to him for a few minutes and he died. At 11 o\u2019clock at night, he stopped breathing.<\/p>\n I keep remembering how, just the night before, we\u2019d all gone to visit my family, my mum and dad, with my wife. We stayed until midnight, one in the morning. We had such a beautiful night. We were trying to convince Ari to get married, saying you are the only one left and you are such a beautiful brother and so get married, get married soon. It was very hard to convince him to get married, but that night was a beautiful, perfect night because he decided to get married. And we said, OK, December we will have a wedding and everybody was planning, I\u2019m buying you this, I\u2019m buying you that.<\/p>\n I would give all my life for him to come back again for one second. I would give all my life, all my body just to see him.<\/p>\n His friends have changed the name of their group to Shahid [Martyr] Ari. They say: \u201cUntil we die, we\u2019ll fight fires. We are no more important than him, so we are going to follow his path.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, every year we have one fire after another. If we continue like this, in a few years, we will lose all the trees and forests here. We have these beautiful forests and mountains, but if you go south, like towards Kirkuk, you can tell that the climate is changing, the landscape is changing. If you look at the wave of the drought and the climate change, it\u2019s coming towards us, coming towards the mountainous areas.<\/p>\n Ari\u2019s fire-fighting group vows: \u2018Until we die, we\u2019ll fight fires.\u2019 Photograph: Fariq Faraj Mahmood\/Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n If you look at Switzerland, for example, they have beautiful nature, but they have a system to protect it. But here, we don\u2019t protect the beauty, we don\u2019t appreciate the beauty and the system doesn\u2019t appreciate it and doesn\u2019t do anything about it. Unfortunately, if we continue like this, we\u2019re going to keep facing even more fierce wildfires and we\u2019re going to lose all our beauty.<\/p>\n We never used to use a cooler, air conditioner or anything like that. We used to live sleeping on the roof. As far as I\u2019m witnessing, the planet, this area is ending. We\u2019re dying, basically. Even in Hawraman you cannot sleep outdoors. You have to have a fan or something outside.<\/p>\n About the series <\/p>\n