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Photographer Claire Beckett captured the soldiers and civilians who dress up as Afghans and Iraqis in military bases across America. They play everything from insurgents to shoppers in mocked-up firefights
Truck-driver and lead insurgent Ariel Combs in 2017.Wed 19 Nov 2025 08.00 CET
Army specialists John Griffin and Bobby Kirby
Boston-based artist and photographer Claire Beckett visited military bases across the US between 2006 and 2023 to explore how Arabs and Muslims are depicted during counterinsurgency training for postings to Iraq and Afghanistan. All photographs and quotes by Claire Beckett. Defense Language by Claire Beckett is available to purchase from Gost Books
Marine major John Cowait playing the role of a warlord holding a Taliban training camp on a remote Afghan mountaintop, 2009
‘Those portrayed in the photographs,’ says Beckett, ‘include military personnel – often veterans playing the role of enemy combatants, or immigrants from Iraq or Afghanistan. Local American civilians are hired to populate the artificial villages’
Marine lance corporal Nicole Camala Veen
Beckett: ‘I’m looking at the way Americans such as myself interact with other cultures, drawing attention to the problematic depiction of “cultural others”, and challenging the implicit assumption of American cultural superiority’
Joint Command Center, 2009
‘The photographs were made at bases across America, from New York to South Carolina to California’
Army specialist Gary Louis Sims playing the role of Safah Mehdi Faris, member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, 2009
‘The images include formal portraits, landscapes featuring makeshift buildings, and informal images of people interacting’
Civilian Afghan-Americans playing the role of Afghan villagers, 2009
‘Some of the civilian role players were recruited from Iraqi or Afghan communities in the US to make training realistic through their appearance, their use of Arabic or one of the languages of Afghanistan and any cultural knowledge’
Lead insurgent sergeant Ariel Combs, 2017
‘Combs, a truck driver at Fort Irwin, in California, was occasionally tasked with playing an insurgent. She told me: “I’m the bad guy. I shoot at the good guys. They’re doing a patrol of a city and come into contact with our planted explosives. While they’re reacting, I start shooting at them. We launch grenades and stuff like that. They provide suppressive fire – then their helicopter comes in and drops a big bomb on us. We’re completely decimated’
Marines sergeant John Sexon, lance corporal Cameron Stark and lance corporal Joshua Stevens role playing as Taliban fighters, 2009
‘This a marine unit in Lake Tahoe, training for Afghanistan. Amid shooting, a marine suggested they ford the river and pose for me on the other side. It was an amazing gift. They took off their boots, crossed and posed barefoot. The combination of their feet, the river, and their stance has a primordial feel’
Howeida Abdelrahman playing the role of an Iraqi civilian, 2007
‘This was a paid position. The purpose of civilian role players was to populate simulated villages and provide people who could perform basic actions, such as pretending to sell vegetables at a market or simply filling the streets’
Army specialist Gary McCorkle as Jibril Ihsan Hamal, member of the Sunni Islamist militant organisation Islamic Army of Iraq, 2009
‘This is a veteran from the Iraq war playing the role of an enemy combatant. This was a quiet moment between mock battles. I asked the soldier to pose as his character. He is holding a mock weapon, an explosive made from a shaving cream can’
Marine lance corporal Joshua Stevens playing the role of a Taliban fighter, 2009
‘This project forced me to confront the disproportionately large influence we have as Americans – and how our actions, or inactions, impact people worldwide’Explore more on these topics
