A New season of Ahraz

An investigative journey into Mesopotamia.. New season of Ahraz

In light of the constant talk about climate change that faces us globally, Iraq specifically faces the challenges of desertification and water drought. This prompted us, at Sowt, to research and investigate the issue that affects the water future of Iraq, especially since Ahraz has always been a podcast that seeks to uncover the circumstances of crimes in our region.

Over the past two years, we have produced two seasons of the Ahraz podcast, which weaves together true crime threads and investigates their missing links. The first season from Egypt was about the murder of the Egyptian bishop in 2018, Anba Epiphanius. The second season was from Syria, where we followed the crimes of torturing women in the Joreen detention center located in the Hama governorate, and we tried to understand the context and listen to the survivors.

Over the course of 6 episodes of the third season of Ahraz, we will take our listeners on an in-depth journey inside Iraq, as we focus on the crime of draining the Ahwar, which was a land flooded with water and sung by the Iraqis. Today, however, the Ahwar has become dry land, and the Iraqis walk on it with their feet.

Our journey began in southern Iraq, where a tribal murder was committed. The investigation threads extended until we reached Baghdad, where the floundering political decisions regarding the water issues are, then we went on to monitor the regional reality and the Turkish role that sees the water file as dangerous as the nuclear file.

Work on this season lasted for a full year with a functionally-diverse team working on it. The season’s episodes were written and presented by Alwaleed Khaled. The season was produced and edited by Ahmed Iman Zakaria. Ahmed Saleh Nema, Mortada Ali, and Walid Safi contributed to the preparation, and Mahmoud Khawaja participated in the editing. Tala Al-Essa, Tala Halawa, and Haneen Saleh also assisted in the recordings. Badr Al-Halilat prepared the music theme for this season. And Noureddine Belhassan took charge of the post-production and sound engineering.

We are excited to share our new project with you and await your engagement with the episodes on the various Sowt platforms.

You can listen to the entire third season of Ahraz now, two weeks before the first episode is published to the public, in addition to listening to Sowt’s top shows, ads-free, two weeks before they are published on various podcast apps by subscribing to Sowt Plus Here

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