In search of something to say about the World Cup, other than Why No Canada?, I came across a short story on the weekend that appeared from Agence France-Presse.
The headline was intriguing enough:
Two die as hardline Islamists ban World Cup
I have two short thoughts to share about the piece.
First, whether it was a mistake of writing or editing, this is one of the most interesting examples of "burying the lede" that I have seen in some time. To wit: nothwithstanding the fact that I might have known who JIC deputy chairman AbdulKadir Ali Omar was -- he appeared in paragraph three -- it's not until the seventh paragraph of the piece that we're told this is all taking place in Somalia, specifically Mogadishu.
It's interesting for reasons beyond the poor presentation, mind you. I wonder what other countries would come to mind of anyone reading the piece. For my part, I had already decided that it was either Iran or Afghanistan, perhaps even Indonesia, with a remote chance that it might even be Iraq. All of which seemed reasonable to me. I'm not one of those people for whom the region blends into one big xenophobic mass, either. I spent five years of my childhood in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and returned to the Middle East on several occasions to visit my parents, who subsequently lived in both Oman and Dubai. I'd like nothing more than to take another trip to the beaches of Oman, white as snow, and full of lobsters we caught while spearfishing and boiled in white wine over a campfire. I'm a fan of the region, at least from a geological (and gastronomical) perspective.
But I do admit being capable of believing the above story was taking place in pretty much half of the predominantly Islamic countries one could come up with. That's unfortunate, mainly for the fact that I'm sure I'm not alone. (I didn't think it was any of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Dubai, Oman, or Qatar. Bahrain didn't even come to mind.)
The second point is simpler. Wherever it may be, even a country mired in civil war, it really is quite amazing that this is happening at all. Stopping people from watching soccer? There is only one reason to do that: to prove that you can.
Postscript: A comment from a reader shows that the buried lede was a problem with the online news syndicator, and not AFP itself. So it wasn't a writing or editing error. That's good to hear. Mind you, both the second half of the first thought and the second thought remain valid nonetheless.