Anastasia Taylor-Lind, 23, of the University of Wales College Newport, spent a month capturing images of the female Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.
Her work beat 8,000 rivals in the Guardian Weekend magazine competition.
Judge and leading photographer David Bailey compared her winning picture to "the classic portrait of Che Guevara".
That's very much about how she wants to be portrayed. I was just there to capture it 
In 2003, she travelled to the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq to collect images for her college graduation exhibition.
The female fighters, motivated by hatred for Saddam's regime and a desire to avenge the torture and murder of loved ones, became her chosen topic.
But the privations paid off in the form of a Ãﾃ???Ãﾃ??Ãﾃ?Ãﾂ£5,000 prize and a commission for the Guardian.
Road block
She said: "I didn't ever think that David Bailey would ever be commenting on one of my photographs.
"For me, winning this photography competition with this particular image is very important because the photographs were judged on the amount of passion they captured.
"So it's very important for me that this woman in particular was chosen.
"She was standing at the road block and holding the gun as it is. I can speak very little Kurdish, she couldn't speak any English.
"So I just went and stood in front of her and pointed at my camera.
"She nodded and pulled her shoulders back and tilted her head back. So that's very much about how she wants to be portrayed. I was just there to capture it."