!Movies about daesh
---
agk's diary
16 April 2024 @ 14:29 UTC
---
written on X61 with vf15 monitor, model m keyboard
while daughter yells, sings, and climbs on me
(finished while she's at school)
---
The so-called islamic state (perjoratively called
da'esh) started as a band of criminals in the
lawless vacuum my country produced in Iraq. They
got enormous funding, recruits, and arms from Gulf
monarchies, Turkey, my country, and the UK to
aim their hideousness at their benefactors'
official enemies: Syrian government, Kurds, etc.
Their proto-state was defeated by a US/Russian/
Iranian/local effort. Now they're essentially a
mercenary US/UK foreign legion for maintaining
instability in Yemen, the Sahel, greater Syria,
and Afghanistan. They're also being tried out as
terrorists-for-hire against Russia and Iran.
There was a time, not long ago, when pretty much
everybody publicly agreed da'esh was bad, wrong,
and evil. They were useful for justifying state
interventions, so they weren't just real monsters,
they were officially monsters, too. Which meant
people all over the world could cheer when they
got their asses kicked in Mosul, Palmyra, Raqqa,
and Aleppo.
With an enemy already as officially bad as slavery
and the Nazis getting beaten back into gangs-for-
hire pulp, the question was, where were the movies?
Not the documentaries or newsmagazine specials with
haunting background music and interviews with guys
in front of bookshelves, but the action, the drama.
Kilo Two Bravo (2014) AKA Kajaki
This film isn't about fighting da'esh, it's about
a British forward operating base in Helmand
province, Afghanistan. Soldiers sweat and swagger
through the unclear mission to guard a dam or some-
thing. Due to ignorance and semi-abandonment by the
imperial center they blunder into a minefield and
try to save each other from the leftovers of their
past wars.
It's an astounding story on its own merits and a
sharp parable of the imperial adventures that
produced the soil in which, 2500 km away, da'esh
grew. It's gruesome, gripping, and illustrates the
US/UK soldier's experience of modern imperial
military occupation before cheap suicide drones.
In Syria (2017) AKA Insyriated
War isn't all soldiers and isn't all men. When
hellfire missiles hit parties and 500lb unguided
bombs or glide bombs collapse cities (Mosul, Gaza),
mostly civilian women and children are dismembered,
burnt, or shredded. Same when cities are beseiged,
food's scarce and expensive, and shopping risks
disabling injury, abduction, death, or rape.
This devastating drama takes place inside an
apartment in Damascus. There were lots of
apartments like it in Mosul, Raqqa, and Gaza. A
family is stuck. They want to flee the country or
something. There's a sniper outside. This film
illustrates most peoples' experience of modern war.
Damascus Time (2018) AKA Damascus Under Fire
Finally, a movie where we do battle with the
bastards! Well, not "us" (as in, my country), and
not "battle," but this is a solid action film.
Iranian pilots try to rescue the people of Palmyra
from da'esh gangs that took over the small city.
Our heroes have a huge Anatnov plane and cover of
night. Is that enough?
There are plenty of plot twists and turns, video
messages sent home to the pregnant wife in Iran,
and sad moments, but also our first good look at
da'esh. They're focused on propaganda and image
management. They're dangerous, undisciplined, ego-
tistical goons. They're foreign (Belgian, Ausssie,
etc), they speak largely English (the pilots speak
Farsi among themselves, Syrians Arabic).
It's a war film, so there's suspense and blood, but
this the first one on my list you can watch with
the family. In some ways, it's a modern Western.
Mosul (2019)
There were two films with the same name in 2019.
The other one's a documentary that gets inside
Hashd al-Shabi, the Popular Mobilization Forces,
who played the bigger part in liberating Iraq. But
I'm recommending dramas and action flicks.
We follow about ten Iraqi guys with three HMMVWs,
the remnants of the Nineveh SWAT team. They onboard
a new guy and pursue a mission that we don't learn
the objectives of til the final scene. There's a
memorable confrontation with an imperious Iranian
Hashd corporal. Da'esh make life hell, but are
mostly at a distance or killed quick.
It's fast-paced, harrowing, well acted, although
the protagonists are a little too disciplined,
focused, and cohesive under (and after) fire. You
could probably watch this one with family, too.
Once in the Desert (2022)
We're back where we started, concealed explosives.
I remember watching Russian mine clearing vehicles,
chains slapping the ground, clear minefields after
da'esh's withdrawal from the Syrian north. In this
film, a grizzled sapper in Palmyra defuses or
detonates many explosive booby traps.
Everybody's on their smartphone, the love subplot's
fine, the sapper's relationships with Syrian Arab
Army protegees are unremarkable, but something
about this movie really shines. The Iranians in
Damascus Time and Iraqis in Mosul make you feel the
urgency of savng people. This movie makes you feel
the odd (in US storytelling) urgency of saving
infrastructure.
I deeply felt while watching this action film the
difference between the tragedy of children dying in
a village vs the well dying and the village with it.
Orchards, refineries, these things must be protect-
ed. They make life possible.
---
Some of these films are on Youtube, some on torrent
sites, some on spammy streaming services like
bflix.to. They're not hard to find. Together, I
think they tell a compelling tale of our new bad
times and how people experience and participate in
them.
Against artillery, trenches. Against aerial bombs,
tunnels. Amid and outside the ruins, my country's
strategy is embargo, seige, starvation, assassin-
ation, terrorism. Life goes on. In apartments, on
patrol, in cleanup and reconstruction. These films
show life. Survival, and life.
