A Comparative Analysis of Representational Politics in Middle Eastern War Posters

During the final decades of the 20th century, the Middle East experienced intense military conflicts that transformed not only its geopolitical configurations but also its visual and cultural outputs. Among these, war posters played a central role in constructing ideological narratives and mobilizing collective sentiment. Far from serving as mere tools of propaganda, such posters functioned as ideologically charged visual texts that shaped memory, reinforced national identity, and drew symbolic boundaries between self and enemy. Despite their significance, comparative analyses of representational strategies across different Middle Eastern cultures remain rare. This study conducts a comparative visual analysis of three war posters produced during the 1980s in Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq—each reflecting distinct cultural contexts yet responding to contemporaneous geopolitical crises. Utilizing the social semiotic framework developed by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, the research investigates how visual imagery constructs ideological meaning through representational, interactive, and compositional meta functions. The central question asks: How are representational politics organized in war posters from three different cultural contexts within a shared historical timeframe? The research adopts a qualitative, interpretive methodology grounded in visual content analysis. Data were collected through purposive sampling from archival collections and online repositories. Three posters—one Iranian (from the Iran-Iraq War), one Afghan (from the anti-Soviet resistance), and one Iraqi (from the Ba’athist propaganda campaigns)—were selected based on thematic and geographical diversity. Contextual materials, including historical records and prior studies, supported the semiotic analysis and clarified each poster’s ideological and cultural background. Findings indicate that all three posters use culturally embedded symbols—such as religious motifs, heroic figures, and national scripts—to convey narratives of struggle, resistance, and legitimacy. However, the representational logic and compositional structure differ across cases. The Iranian poster emphasizes collective participation and ideological unity, depicting multiple actors (a soldier, cleric, youth, and a woman with a child) advancing together, framed by references to sacred defense. The Afghan poster highlights a lone mujahid as a symbol of divine and national victory, standing over a defeated Soviet bear, with Quranic text and national imagery reinforcing his moral and spiritual authority. The Iraqi poster glorifies Arab supremacy by depicting a mounted warrior in motion, surrounded by dense Arabic calligraphy, while completely erasing the visual presence of the Persian enemy. Across all cases, the enemy is either visually absent, symbolically diminished, or relegated to textual reference. This strategic visual omission enhances the focus on the self as heroic and righteous. Moreover, each image manipulates viewer interaction through angle, gaze, and spatial arrangement to evoke identification, admiration, or compliance. The posters thus act not merely as reflections of war, but as active agents in ideological production. This study concludes that visual representations in war posters are critical tools in shaping collective memory, sustaining political identities, and legitimizing conflict narratives. By applying social semiotics, the research demonstrates how images move beyond representation to function as cultural agents of discourse and power. It underscores the need for more cross-cultural visual studies to understand how meaning, identity, and ideology are negotiated through imagery in conflict zones.