Native Art Can Be The Best PSYOP

The February 4, 2020 NY Times ran an article “In Iraq Where Beauty Was long Suppressed, Art Flowers Amid Protests” (https://nyti.ms/2ScUsVk  which is also the photo source). While the political climate in Iraq is volatile and arguments about US troops are staying and over who was responsible for the most recent rocket attack.

Protest art is cropping in in various places around Baghdad.

These two paragraphs pretty much sum up the situation:

“The paintings, sculptures, photographs and shrines to killed protesters are political art of a kind rarely seen in Iraq, where art has been made for at least 10,000 years. It is as if an entire society is awakening to the sound of its own voice, and to the shape, size and sway of its creative force.

“In the beginning this was an uprising, but now it is a revolution,” said Bassim al-Shadhir, an Iraqi-German who goes back and forth between the two countries and has participated in the protests. “There is art, there is theater, people are giving lectures and distributing books — giving them away for free.””

Interestingly enough the article noted “There has been little if any new anti-American messages in the paintings in recent days, even though there is more anti-American feeling in Baghdad…..

The article postulates that there are two possible reasons: there are already more than enough murals with anti-American and Anti-Israel messages and/or there is not much available space.

Unlike other forms of influence, there is no question about the origin and how the art reflects how a younger generation of Iraqis have been influenced by the internet.

While today’s influence campaigns have been focused on Social Media and the like, it is worthwhile to step back and recognize that the people of the country are the best ones to influence its future.