Up here, it is about oil. From two terminals stretching almost 20km (12 miles) out to sea in the northern Gulf, Iraq’s economic lifeblood – up to 1.8m barrels per day of it – flows into giant tankers that sit ever lower on the sea as they take on more crude oil.

Around the terminals, warships and other vessels from the US, UK and Australia, along with a renascent Iraqi coastal force, protect a 2,000-metre exclusion zone.