As residents have battled their displacement, their plight has been framed against a backdrop of arts events, in a kind of live gentrification jamboree.
The primary importance of Kobane, a town populated by Kurds on the border with Turkey, lies in the scale of human misery that the battle and its displacement of 250,000 people has created.
If we buy that, then it will be all the more disturbing for us to allow the text's central claim, that these beautiful, frequently seen war photographs work, without us realizing it, to "glorify war through an unrelenting parade of beautiful images whose function is to sanctify the accompanying descriptions of battle, death, destruction, and displacement," as Shields writes in his introduction.
In recent years, the country's north has increasingly fallen prey to armed groups as President Francois Bozize's government has battled rebel factions resulting in displacement of more than 300,000 people and near-complete decimation of infrastructure.
The displacement of the key battle point will be measured by the IMU.
The OCHA report gave no figures or details of potential displacement caused by that battle.
On Monday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that the battle for Afrin had "resulted in significant civilian displacement with reports of numerous casualties and damage to infrastructure".
The number of refugees from the world's battle zones topped 50 million last year, the greatest human displacement since World War II, the London-based rights group reported.
Added to this sense of displacement was the fear that they might be killed in battle and never see their loved ones again.
Kenya's assistance and leadership is seen as crucial in the battle against Indian Ocean piracy and in tackling regional problems including violence and mass displacement in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
