War Warrior Kids
Growing up as a child in a war zone is too disturbing for anyone who’s had a normal childhood to understand. But let me try to explain.
My family loves to joke about my first birthday during an Iranian airstrike in 1980s Baghdad. I’d just learned to blow out candles and became so obsessed that any flicker of candlelight made me clap, mumble “yo-yo,” my version of the universal English birthday song, and blow the candles out. So while everyone hid under the staircase in the dark, trying to light a candle during an Iranian missile barrage, baby me kept extinguishing them every time—earning a round of whispered curses each time. That was my childhood.
By the time I was in school, I was so into war stories, I crushed over every man in military uniform. I had a distant cousin who was an army officer on the front lines during the Iraq–Iran war who visited often as our house served as a rest stop for him. I listened in awe as he talked about killing the “bad” Iranian soldiers.
I realized in my adulthood what a cruel little creature I was, devoid of all empathy. And to my Persian friends, I beg forgiveness. But I was completely surrounded by Saddam’s state propaganda, where violence was not only the daily norm, it was necessary, heroic, warranted. My brain absolutely soaked it in — and so did my distant cousin, probably.
It is exactly these childhood experiences that influence my career today, hellbent on protecting children from hateful propaganda and stories that normalize and glorify violence. Which brings me to Daish, or the “Islamic State.”
What distinguishes Daish from its predecessors like Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Iraq, or the Maghreb, is its focus on propaganda that both features and targets children.
During the time they occupied territory in Iraq, Daish was trying to create an identity and a state — with dress codes, iconography, songs, and its own pop culture. A big part of that was action movies aimed at recruiting teenage boys. I can attest, from interviewing many eyewitnesses who lived in Mosul and Anbar under Daish’s rule, that they were indeed successful in recruiting child soldiers.
Below is a sequence of screengrabs from a feature-length, documentary-style, action-packed movie produced by Daish featuring teenage boys, which were also its target audience.
Before we get on our high horses, we should ask ourselves: how many mainstream movies have we seen lately that glorify war and vilify “outsiders” out to destroy our way of life? Are we unwittingly complicit in also promoting these narratives of war and hate?
Tilt your phone sideways for captions and enjoy the show!
Images shown here fall under Fair Use and are included strictly for research, education, and public awareness. They are used to analyze and critique ISIS/Daesh propaganda, not to promote or distribute extremist content.
