Security Fort (Large)

A handful of very large and identical security forts were built by the Baathis. Occupying strategic locations on major roads, they were major processing centers for disarming Peshmerga. Each became notorious in its own way: some for relatively efficient release, and others for total elimination of all who were arrested there.

They resemble British forts, and before them the Ottoman forts, and even going back the Sassanian forts like the one in Khorramabad in Iran. They show that systems created long ago are simply given new energy by regime after regime after regime — using the same forms, which achieve the same needs, if not going so far as to simply reuse the very same buildings after simply swapping out the flags.