Story highlights 45-year-old shepherd Shukar Mahmoud is stuck at a checkpoint with his flock

Bartella, Iraq (CNN) An Iraqi shepherd looks at his flock -- his prized and only possessions -- and wonders how he ended up here, stuck in a dusty no man's land between two checkpoints, barely 50 meters apart.

Behind Shakur Mahmoud, the danger he fled; ahead a kind-of "sectarian bureaucracy."

The Kurdish guards won't let Mahmoud past their checkpoint to sell his sheep in their areas because they say they're "Arab sheep."

It's not an official rule. It's just the rule today.

Beyond the checkpoint, there's a camp for displaced people where Mahmoud's family waits for him, but for now this is where his journey ends.

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