Monday, August 08, 2005

More on Vincent

See also my previous post below. This is from Juan Cole:
Was American journalist Steve Vincent killed in Basra as part of an honor killing? He was romantically involved with his Iraqi interpreter, who was shot 4 times. If her clan thought she was shaming them by appearing to be having an affair outside wedlock with an American male, they might well have decided to end it. In Mediterranean culture, a man's honor tends to be wrought up with his ability to protect his womenfolk from seduction by strange men. Where a woman of the family sleeps around, it brings enormous shame on her father, brothers and cousins, and it is not unknown for them to kill her. These sentiments and this sort of behavior tend to be rural and to hold among the uneducated, but are not unknown in urban areas. Vincent did not know anything serious about Middle Eastern culture and was aggressive about criticizing what he could see of it on the surface, and if he was behaving in the way the Telegraph article describes, he was acting in an extremely dangerous manner.
UPDATE (Aug 9, 12:27pm):

Nell Lancaster writes in the Comments that, "It seems very doubtful to me that Nour Weidi or Steven Vincent were killed by members of her family. She was yelling their name as protection when she was being kidnapped off the street.

Cole's initial reaction to Vincent's murder -- surprise that it would happen because Basra is so much safer than Baghdad -- was disappointing. Clearly he hadn't been reading Vincent's dispatches, or taking very seriously the evidence over the last few months of systematic killings of Sunnis identified with the former government."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It seems very doubtful to me that Nour Weidi or Steven Vincent were killed by members of her family. She was yelling their name as protection when she was being kidnaped off the street.

Cole's initial reaction to Vincent's murder -- surprise that it would happen because Basra is so much safer than Baghdad -- was disappointing. Clearly he hadn't been reading Vincent's dispatches, or taking very seriously the evidence over the last few months of systematic killings of Sunnis identified with the former government.