Filmmaker Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks alone, embedded with the Islamic State in June 2014, gaining unprecedented access into the heart of the self-proclaimed caliphate. 

Here he describes what he learned.

For one month, we embedded with the Peshmerga fighters on the Mosul frontline, gaining an insight into the coalition’s faltering war against the Islamic State through the eyes of the Kurdish volunteers bearing the brunt of the fighting.

This is what we saw.

“Whatever these murderers think they’ll achieve by killing innocent Americans like Steven, they have already failed.”