During war Iranians used human wave attacks (people walking to certain death including child soldiers) on Iraq, with his promise that they would automatically go to paradise—al Janna— if they died in battle, and his pursuit of victory in the Iran–Iraq War that ultimately proved futile. By March 1984, Iran's population had dropped by well over two million. This included an estimated one and a half million that had fled Iran, victims of political executions, and the hundreds of thousands of "martyrs" from Khomeini's bloody "human wave " attacks on Iraq.