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An unorthodox anthropologist goes face to face with the enemy.
On a good day, driving to the front line of the war against the Islamic State carries some risk. This is not a good day: High winds have kicked up enough dust to dim the sun and hide nearby mountains, a thick haze that could provide cover for snipers or suicide bombers. While Kurdish soldiers, known as Peshmerga, meaning "those who face death," have proved adept at keeping a determined foe at bay, they can't prevent every incursion along a roughly 650-mile border, particularly when those sneaking in are willing, even eager, to die in the attempt.
The road to the front passes through tiny villages of cinderblock houses and over flat, green fields before giving way to rockier terrain as it winds southwest from Erbil, capital of Kurdistan, a country that doesn't quite exist. It also passes through a series of military checkpoints where increasingly skeptical soldiers, ancient AK-47s slung over their shoulders, peer into a vehicle and ask its occupants -- not unreasonably -- where, exactly, they think they are going.
Phone calls must be made, documents presented. Satisfied, the soldiers step back and wave the car on.
"I am really worried," says Lydia Wilson from the back seat. "This is the worst time to be going." Wilson, a medieval historian by training, is not easily cowed. She's visited military bases before, and she's sat across a table from ISIS fighters. She's just not keen on needless risk. Hoshang Waziri, this group's translator and cultural ambassador, scans the blurred horizon and doesn't like what he sees, either. It's not the lobbed shell or the stray bullet that unnerves him so much as the prospect of getting kidnapped. "That's what scares me," he says. "The idea of falling into their hands."
They spent the morning drinking strong black tea from small glass cups with a Kurdish official who, they hope, will grant them access to captured ISIS fighters, the holy grail of research subjects and, for obvious reasons, the toughest to track down. They explained to the official, as they explain to everyone, that they are not journalists angling for a story or government envoys pushing an agenda, but rather social scientists interested in...