A still from Helly luv’s Revolution video.

The last time I was in Iraq, my uncle just learned that his wife is pregnant with twins. This last week, I visited to find these twins to be grown 15 year old teenagers.

It’s been 15 years since I last visited Iraq, and I swear at times I almost forget or want to forget that I belong to this place. Westward-looking all my life, I have oceans between me and my birthplace of Baghdad.

In the four days that I was there, every other person that I met hopefully told me to come back and “fix it”. I would nod and smile, feeling extremely uncomfortable with such comments. Who am I to “fix it”? Truth be told, I cannot claim to even be Iraqi for many reasons. And, it seemed to me quite problematic for locals to expect me to be more knowledgeable than they are on their own city. Moreover, I realize that many diasporic Arab youth have a mentality of “going to the States to make [my] name and then come back [to the Arab world]”.

This seems to be a neo-imperial understanding of the role of diasporic communities, one that is not far from that of previous colonial and imperial regimes in the Arab world, at least.

I believe that diasporic communities and individuals need to sharpen the ways in which they position themselves vis-a-vis their countries of origin. In that vein, an awareness of the politics of representation and belonging needs to be developed in order to nuance these relations. This is not to say that those of us in the diasporas of war-torn countries do not suffer from our own crises in relation to our home countries. However, it is a call to not appropriate the issues of those residing in those countries, especially when those of us in the diaspora are Westernized. In short, an Arab tongue does not mean an Arab person.

To illustrate this point, I turn to Helly Luv’s groundbreaking hit ‘Revolution’ from 2015. In this video, we witness the destruction of a Kurdish village by ISIS. The scene of a communal and lively Kurdish town are upset by this destruction. Amidst the mayhem, Helly Luv is seen walking against the current of those running away. In her high heels, she stands firmly in front of an army tank and raises a banner that states, “Stop The Violence”.

The video goes on to glamourize revolutions and wars through catchy tunes and beautiful aesthetics. Luv simplifies the presence of ISIS and other issues that mar the country; simultaneously, she situates herself as the heroine of the “village”, along with the Peshmerga, without paying attention to the violences that the Peshmerga has also committed.

Luv is a Kurdish-Finnish woman, whose family fled Kurdish Iraq to Iran in the 80s. Clearly, her own experiences are telling of the many issues that have existed in Iraq in the 80s. However, the ways in which Luv seems to represent Kurds and the Peshmerga, appropriating their roles is extremely problematic, as she presents herself as the savior of her people with liberal slogans, such as ‘Stop the Violence’. Such slogans and representations make invisible the role of money flows and imperial politics that embolden groups, such as ISIS and the Peshmerga. This loops us back to the politics of representation associated with members of the diaspora and their simplistic appropriation, exploitation, and exoticiziation of their origins without being self-reflexive about their own assumptions.