We Draw Victory (1986, Iraq)

Title: نرسم الانتصار (We Draw Victory)
Language: Arabic
Format: Paperback, Coloring Comic Book
Illustrator: عامر رشاد (Amer Rashad)
Publisher: دار ثقافة الأطفال (Children’s Culture House)
Series: مكتبة الطفل – سلسلة الهوايات (Children's Library – Hobbies Series)
Year: 1986
Place of Publication: Baghdad, Iraq
Pages: 36
Dimensions: 21 x 14.5 cm
Condition: Very good, some signs of age
Digitization Status: Not Digitized
Shipping from: New York City

A rare artifact of Iraqi wartime propaganda for children, We Draw Victory (1986) is an unsettling yet significant coloring book produced during the height of the Iran-Iraq War. Illustrated by Amer Rashad and published by the Children’s Culture House under Iraq’s Ministry of Culture and Information, the book weaponizes caricature and satire to vilify Ayatollah Khomeini and his allies.

Each page of this comic coloring book invites young readers to color in grotesque depictions of Iranian clerics, Zionist figures, and scenes of military triumph. From an Iraqi child jabbing Khomeini with a pencil to crude anti-Semitic imagery and portrayals of Iranian leaders receiving weapons from Jewish conspirators, the book paints a clear ideological message tailored for a generation raised under siege.

Designed as both a coloring book and psychological tool, the publication combines comic illustration with nationalist symbolism—such as children armed with books and pencils instead of swords—projecting Saddam-era militarism into educational spaces.

The back cover drives home the message with a cartoon missile inscribed:
“إلى خميني الرجال، مع التمنيات، بجيشكم الحمراء”
(“To Khomeini the man, with best wishes, from your red army”).

A chilling example of how state apparatuses targeted the imaginations of children, this piece sits at the unsettling intersection of pedagogy, war, and propaganda. It is part of a small and now rare genre of Ba'athist print ephemera created during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), intended for domestic distribution but now of deep historical significance to researchers, archivists, and collectors.