A bunch of pink and orange roses awaited Annalena Baerbock as she arrived at the Qadiya refugee camp in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, but the German foreign minister could not get rid of her gift quickly enough. “It’s not just International Women’s Day for ministers,” she said while frantically pulling the bouquet apart and handing out individual flowers to the throng around her.
She looked decidedly more in her element when she started walking around the camp south of the city of Zakho, joining an all-girls five-a-side football match and crunching into a tackle seconds after kick-off, or hitting uppercuts into punch mitts at a boxing club for girls.
