A Follow-up to the Last Blog: "Violence in Mosul Forces Iraqi Christians to Flee" By Erica Goode and Suadad Al-Salhy

My last blog discussed an article about the Iraqi Parliament's decision to drop a provision ensuring political representation for minorities. This new article I read was about the depressing aftermath of that decision. I don't know how else to introduce this article; just read it, and you'll see why. It's so much harder to write some lengthy introduction to a topic that's just plain sad.

So, anyway, violence has increased in Mosul, Iraq, and it seems that the killers are particularly targeting Christians. Mosul had been a kind-of refuge for Christians; in the past, they had fled there from other parts of Iraq. The article says that many Iraqi Christian leaders believe that the increased violence is due to the protests led by Christians against the decision to remove the provision.

This article contains a lot of information. It does a very good job of describing the situation in Iraq. It gives the background that sets the scene of the current state of the country. As a reader, I, for one, appreciated how the writers explained where Christians typically live in Iraq and why. The writers treat their readers like they don't know anything, which they probably don't. This is not a negative thing; it's important for everyone to be capable of understanding the content of a story. For example, the article discusses the Nineveh Plain, where many Christians have taken refuge because the towns there are mainly Christian. It goes on to say violence is down in other parts of the country because it has moved to this area where more Christians live. The article tells where Christians have now moved to and their reasons why. I thought it was important that the article gave examples of hostility encountered by Christians, including threats and obviously, direct violence. The writers included past violence as well, which added to the background information.

The article had a good variety of sources. It included information from a few "experts," but what was best of all was the personal anecdote from a resident of Mosul. This story was also probably the most depressing part of the piece, which was why it was so necessary. It gave readers a reason to care. Readers can only stand to be fed information from "experts" so much. They want to be given the chance to relate to people on a personal level. The story was about how the man's brother was killed in front of his own son. In any normal person, this should incite sadness and anger. Who could imagine watching their father die? Who would want to imagine something as awful and terrifying as that? No person should have to go through that. No person should have to lose a sibling that way either. I have two brothers and two sisters, and I can truthfully say that the bond between siblings is probably one of the strongest in the world. Readers can see how wrong all of this is because they are seeing it through the man's eyes. As people, we are capable of seeing the world from another person's perspective when we really try. We're all united by our common human condition. It was definitely a good choice for the reporters to talk to an everyday person to get his perspective.

But, of course, this blog would not be complete if I didn't find something wrong with this article. Once again, I have to say that I thought the article was very good until I got to the part that said "in other developments." NOT AGAIN! I don't understand why these articles suddenly start talking about something different when they reach a certain point. For those of you that are reading this blog but didn't read the last, that article did the exact same thing. Is this common practice when the story is about the Middle East or Iraq? I know there's a lot going on there, but I don't think it all needs to be jam-packed into one article. It shifts the focus. In this article, it goes from talking about the plight of Iraqi Christians to Iraqi-U.S. relations. I think these relations are probably enough to warrant their own article. All of that is an issue in-and-of itself.

My final comment is that the article ends with one sentence discussing the subject of the picture that accompanies the story. One sentence. At the end of the piece. If it's the picture that goes with the story, shouldn't the story actually be about the picture? That just didn't cut it for me.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin