TIME LightBox Iraq

Yuri Kozyrev in Iraq, 2002-2016: Witnessing the U.S. Invasion, the Rise of the Insurgency and the Fight Against ISIS

A look back at 14 years of work in Iraq

Photojournalist Yuri Kozyrev has lived through the full arc of the war in Iraq – from the initial “shock and awe” phase of bombardment through the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. He worked on the front lines as more and more Iraqis grew to reject the U.S. presence in their country and some came to support an armed insurrection against the American forces. He photographed the war day by day as the insurgency metastasized into a brutal sectarian civil war, sowing the seeds of extremism that continue to devastate the country to this day.

Kozyrev calls his years in Iraq an “amazing experience with horrible consequences.” In this photo gallery, we take a look back at 14 years of work in Iraq.

See Kozyrev’s most recent work from Iraq, On the Front Lines of the War Against ISIS, and read dispatches from TIME’s Middle East bureau chief Jared Malsin.

Yuri Kozyrev is a photojournalist and a TIME contract photographer. He is represented by Noor.

Alice Gabriner, who edited this photo essay, is TIME’s International Photo Editor.

An Iraqi woman walks on a road south of Baghdad, Dec. 20, 2002, prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Tribal chiefs like this one from villages all over Iraq have traveled Baghdad for lessons in how to wage guerrilla warfare in their provinces in the days following the U.S. bombing campaign and occupation of Iraq, March 28, 2003: American soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the Fourth Division of the U.S. Army blindfold men suspected of being arms and explosive dealers in Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and stronghold of his Baathist party, Sept, 24, 2003. Baathists began collaborating with al-Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgency group that was the forerunner of the Islamic State (ISIS), soon after Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. A jounalist climbs out of the hole where toppled dictator Saddam Hussein was captured in Ad Dawr, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit, Dec. 15, 2003. Citizens of Owja and Tikrit , Iraq gather at the cemetery outside Saddam Hussein's ancestral village to bury the bodies of Uday, Qusay and Qusay's son Mustafa, Aug. 2, 2003. Laith Klabos stands on the ruins of his home in Boasil village across the Tigris from Tikrit. The house was demolished by American soldiers, November 2003. IIraqi mourners at a funeral in Fallujah, Iraq, for a man who was killed by American troops after they fired on a crowd of anti-American protesters, April 30, 2003. U.S. soldiers from the 2-12 Cavalry Regiment detain men during an early morning raid in the restive Abu Ghraib area of Baghdad, Oct. 20, 2004. A member of a resistance network operating against U.S. forces in Iraq holds a modified launcher for surface-to-air missiles, Baghdad, Iraq, Dec. 4, 2003. Friday prayer at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, June 25, 2004. Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison, Baghdad, Iraq, June 25, 2004. Dawn breaks in Fallujah, Iraq, as the U.S. military launched a massive offensive to retake the city from Sunni insurgents. A soldier with the Army Task Force 2-2's Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon, fires a rocket at insurgent positions from a makeshift rooftop, Nov, 9, 2004. Shell casings line a rooftop where soldiers with the Army Task Force 2-2's Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon fight insurgents during a major offensive to clear the city of extremists, Fallujah, Nov. 9, 2004. Wreckage of a suicide car bomb in Baghdad, Iraq, 2005. Men read a sign posted in the window of a Mosul, Iraq, tea house proclaiming that the shop's owner has been aiding terrorists, Feb. 23, 2005. A Marine from Fox Co. 2nd Battalion 1st Marines holds his M-16 rifle with pictures of suspected insurgents during the first day of Operation Steel Curtain, an effort to stop foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq. Nov. 5, 2005. Iraqi prisoners are held in an overcrowded Interior Ministry prison, detained by the feared Iraqi police commandos, Wolf Brigade, an almost exclusively Shi'ite counter-insurgency unit, Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 30, 2005. Marines escort suspected insurgents, including Ali Muhammad Said, accused of leading a mortar team in attacking Camp Delta outside al-Karmah, Fallujah, Iraq, Oct. 29, 2005. Iraqi civilians wave white flags for protection while fleeing the city of Husaybah during Operation Steel Curtain, a ​joint American-Iraqi offensive to stop the flow of insurgents crossing the Iraqi- Syrian border, Nov. 7, 2005 A funeral on Oct 7, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq, for 22 men who were found handcuffed and shot dead in eastern Iraq. According to family members, the men, mostly Sunni, were taken from their homes by the special forces of the interior ministry, an almost exclusively Shi'ite counter-insurgency unit. They were found handcuffed and shot dead in a village on the Iraqi Iranian border, Oct. 5, 2005. Children seen from a Humvee window in Fallujah, Iraq, Oct. 31, 2005. An American sniper fires upon an enemy location at the observation post Hotel Ramadi, Ramadi, Iraq, Nov. 18, 2005. U.S. Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Kilo company open fire on insurgents from the observation's post on the roof of the main Iraqi government building complex, Ramadi, Iraq, April 29, 2006. The Marines are guarding the government compound in the heart of an urban neighborhood that has come under frequent attacks from insurgent snipers and car bombs. U.S. Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, Kilo company scan streets and surrounding buildings for insurgents during a patrol in Ramadi, Iraq, April 27, 2006. US soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 506th INF Regiment 101 Airborne DIV attached to 4th Brigade Combat Team 4th INF DIV watch a fire at a market in Al Dora, a neighborhood controlled by Sunni extremists, Baghdad, Iraq, Sept. 28, 2006. A U.S. soldier with 6th squadron, 9th cavalry of the 1st cavalry division holds the flag of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) taken from the roof of a local school in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, which became a stronghold for the Sunni insurgency and AQI, a forerunner of ISIS. Shakarat, Iraq, March 20, 2007. U.S. soldiers from A Troop 5th Squadron 73rd Cavalry detain suspected insurgent sympathizers after killing a militant caught laying a roadside bomb on the outskirts of Baquba. Women from the village begged for the release of the men as U.S. soldiers led them away, Zurah, Iraq, March 15, 2007. U.S. soldiers shield a wounded comrade from debris kicked up by a rescue helicopter descending on Qubah, Iraq, March 24, 2007. Fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents erupted in the village at dawn, when U.S. troops stormed the city and began house-to-house searches for guerrilla fighters. Two U.S. troops were wounded in the clashes. Sixteen suspected insurgents were​ killed. Men arrested by U.S. forces sit bound in the street after a roadside bomb attack in Qubah, Iraq, that left four Americans and one Iraqi boy dead, March 25, 2007. U.S. soldiers fan out across an open field near Baquba, searching for a sniper who fired one shot in their direction. Moments before coming under attack, the soldiers discovered a Kalashnikov, a Quran and the makings of a roadside bomb in a hiding place in the same area where U.S. forces killed one suspected insurgent. Zurah, Iraq, March 15, 2007. Numbers written on the hand of an Iraqi woman in Qubah, a village in Diyala Province, Iraq, March 24, 2007. A U.S. soldier marks the neck of a man with identifying numbers. The numbering system allowed U.S. troops to tell whether anyone was moving about the village, despite a lockdown, Qubah, Iraq, March 24, 2007. A panel of three American military officers question an Iraqi detainee at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention facility in Baghdad, July, 26, 2008. Just under 21,000 Iraqis were held by the U.S. military, outside of the Iraqi justice system, under terms laid out by a U.N. mandate. A bulletin board at Camp Cropper, the second largest U.S. military detention facility in Iraq, displaying makeshift weapons and other contraband confiscated from the Iraqi detainees, Baghdad, Iraq, July 26, 2008. A detainee patient, who nurses say likely lost his hands while handling explosives, holds a Quran at the hospital at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military detention facility in Baghdad, July 26, 2008. A billboard showing the face of Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha founder and hero of the Awakening movement who was assassinated by a suicide bomb in 2007 outside of Zangura in Iraq's desert in Anbar province--where some of the fiercest battles between U.S. forces and insurgents and later between the Awakening movement and al-Qaeda took place, Ramadi, Iraq, Oct. 2008. Combat Outpost Rabiya MOSUL IRAQ -- FEBRUARY 11 2009 A suspected insurgent captured by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul. Detainees walk after prayer at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military detention center, March 16, 2009. At its peak, the prison located 340 miles southeast of Baghdad held 26,000 detainees. Detainees pray at U.S. military detention facility Camp Bucca, Iraq, March 16, 2009. Camp Bucca, an American detention facility, March 16, 2009. Iraqi policemen during a demonstration exercise for U.S. General Ray Odierno's visit at the training center at the Dublin camp in Baghdad, Iraq, March 4, 2009. Soldiers from the Virginia National GuardÕs 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, head back to the U.S. from Camp Adder, having served eight months, marking the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq ends after seven years, Aug. 5, 2010. Kurdish Peshmerga forces defend their front line position against ISIS fighters in the northern Iraqi village of Sultan Abdullah, May 15, 2016.

Your browser is out of date. Please update your browser at http://update.microsoft.com

YOU BROKE TIME.COM!

Dear TIME Reader,

As a regular visitor to TIME.com, we are sure you enjoy all the great journalism created by our editors and reporters. Great journalism has great value, and it costs money to make it. One of the main ways we cover our costs is through advertising.

The use of software that blocks ads limits our ability to provide you with the journalism you enjoy. Consider turning your Ad Blocker off so that we can continue to provide the world class journalism you have become accustomed to.

The TIME Team