!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.