Talk:Simele massacre/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Magicpiano (talk • contribs • count) 21:01, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

This has been an interesting project. I have no particular interest in any side of this incident; my interests tend to North American colonial history (which has its own sad history of unfortunate incidents involving attacks on civilians, albeit with less firepower). I chose to review this article because much of its source material is available to me, so that I could investigate allegations of POV (expressed, sometimes vaguely, on the talk page). I believe the article is somewhat biased, but this can be fixed, given the available sources (and possibly the use of some general books on the history of Iraq in this time).

I was also able to locate Khaldun Husry's paper part 1 on JSTOR, part 2 also available. If you do not have JSTOR access (e.g. through a public or university library), I can email PDFs. He is perhaps sympathetic to the Iraqi view (he claims to have met Bakr Sidqi as a boy in the Baghdad celebrations after the massacre), but he does not whitewash what happened. He does bring up facts (including excerts from British reports on the affair) that are not well accounted for in other sources. For example, he quotes a British report (not by Stafford, by a military officer) that explicitly claims that Yaqu made a premeditated attack on Dirabun. He also cites a letter in which Stafford (the letter's author) says that the Assyrians initiated the hostilities there. Husry also claims that atrocities committed by Assyrians in the Dirabun incident were cited by the British as an instigating reason for the subsequent mass killings and massacres. (None of this, of course, excuses what happened afterward; it is intended to provide a more rounded description of the environment in which the massacre took place.) He makes other claims (some pro-Iraq, some anti-) that are worth exploring.

Breadth and POV

The principal difficulty here is in the background and aftermath of the event. From my checking of sources, it seems clear that tensions were on the rise before the event, and both the Assyrians and the Iraqi government played a role in this. This is presently not communicated well. The background is too short: your average 12-year-old from the far side of the planet (my preferred target audience) will have no idea what the "crisis" is at the start of the article. (I didn't either until I researched it.) The Assyrian resistance appears to be rooted in the diplomacy at that ended the British Mandate; you need to start there.

There are many political/diplomatic positions that need to be described, because many stakeholders contributed to events leading up to the killings: the British position (and to a lesser extent the French position in Syria), the Iraqi government (in particular the impact of its goal of creating a national identity on the Assyrians and other internal groups) and its opposition, Mar Shimun and his opposition, the southern Iraqi situation, and the Kurdish situation. Some of these are now mentioned, others are not, but they do all show up in sources. To give one example, Joseph (p. 192) notes that a major rival to Mar Shimun's power was appointed to head Iraqi activities related to settlement of the Assyrians. This might explan in part his relative intransigence in dealing with the Iraqi government.

The aftermath, especially with respect to non-Assyrian parties, is too brief; more on that in the questions below.

Questions on breadth:

• Who bears animosity toward the Assyrians? Is there a reason for it? (Stafford, 126 mentions Mar Shimun claiming Iraqi govt wants to exterminate Assyrians. Why? This sort of background is critical, and even this observation is absent.)
• According to Stafford (129) and others, Bakr Sidqi had previously issued threats, and the British had recommended the king transfer him out of the region because of this.
• Who owned the land of at least some of the Assyrian villages? (This is in your sources, and appears to be relevant.)
• Mar Shimun is described (by role, position, title) differently several times. Please introduce him once properly.
• According to Husry, Yaqu was openly and actively defying Iraqi government authority as early as spring 1933. He also reports that the Assyrian levies had been released with service weapons and ammunition (for defense against the armed Kurds). He claims that Yaqu's activities were what prompted the army deployment.
• Who ordered Bakr Sidqi out? The prime minister? or king? When? What were his orders? When were troops deployed to the area?
• Given Mar Shimun's role, a more detailed account of what happened to him after the massacre is probably warranted (documented by Husry); it should be presented as part of the aftermath.

Issues on POV:

• Estimate of 3,000 appears to be from a potentially biased source (FIDH report does not show its source for this number, and Dekelaita temporizes, saying "hundreds, perhaps thousands" died). It should be clearer whose number this is, and how they sourced it (as the lower official number is credited), or it should be temporized away, as Dekelaita did. (By the way, I don't think it is fair to just say this is a FIDH number, since we don't know whether or not it came to them from a partisan source. Husry provides a source for this number, and describes it as an Assyrian claim. If this is the case, it should be explicitly labeled as such.)
• What was the king's role in trying to manage Iraqi-Assyrian relations before the massacre, and what happened to him afterward?
• Were any British involved in the decision making process to send troops to the area? Were they aware of the decision, and its implementation, in a timely manner?
• Article links Portal:Assyrians, it should also link Portal:Iraq.
• What was the ethnic/religious makeup of the Iraqi Army (or is it not important)? Attitudes about the Assyrian levies should be presented sooner (this is background to the event, not aftermath).
• "distraction to the continuous Shiite revolt in the southern part of the country": Joseph casts the action against the Assyrians as an attempt by the Ikha government to distract from political divisions that led to a rise in tensions in the south, not to an ongoing revolt. Husry explicitly denies that the southern Shi'a were in revolt at the time, but that there was tension.
• Historiography (around, for example, whether or not Bakr Sidqi or the king ordered the massacre, or if it was orchestrated by Ismael Abawwi on his own initiative) would seem an appropriate addition. (Husry explores this, other dedicated sources might also.)
• A more extensive treatment of this event's impact on Iraqi politics and Iraqi-British relations is needed (beyond what is already given). Husry suggests that Iraqi-British relations nearly broke down over the affair; another source points out that this was the first major intervention of the Iraqi army in domestic politics, something that had long-term consequences (including Bakr Sidqi's later coup, which, while mentioned, is not linked to this event).

Referencing and citation

Article is well referenced and cited to mostly sufficiently reliable sources. However:

• What makes shlama.be a reliable source?
• Bare links (for example, those found in the first three references, but there are more) need access dates; recommend use of {{cite web}}. Web links to non-book material in general should be consistently formatted.
• Works that are used in inline citations should be listed separately (say, under a "Sources" heading) from "Further reading". See WP:LAYOUT.
• Works listed in citations, source work listing, and further reading should be consistently formatted (i.e. if you use {{cite book}}, use it for all books).
• The Stafford book is a reprint; its original year of publication should be given (origyear parameter to {{cite book}}).
• Google Books link to Joseph is incorrect.

MOS

• Prose is at a level I would consider minimally acceptable for GA. If the principle editors do not have English at a high level, I recommend it be copyedited (after the review is closed, please).
• Iraq did not exist at the time of the described events. Please use [[Kingdom of Iraq|Iraq]] or preface your uses of Iraq by a temporal qualifier (e.g. "present-day Iraq").
• Please include an Arabic translation of the name.
• Article formatting is poor. Images are placed opposite each other, leading to "squashed" text (images should be staggered to avoid this). Their placement with respect to quote boxes can also be improved. There is large white space at the top of "Targeted villages" unless the browser window is opened very wide. Please examine your formatting choices in narrower browser windows.
• A number of terms are overlinked. As a general rule, frequently used terms (for example Simele and Mosul) only need to be linked on their first occurrence in the lead, body, and infobox.
• External link checker turns up a dead link. (Failure code is temporary, but I've received the same failure code on repeated tries over the last few days.)
• Disambig checker turns up several links to disambiguation pages.

Images and stability

• Article is stable (no edit wars)
• Images have adequate provenance and captions

Summary

I believe it is possible to address these issues given the available sources, but it may take some time. I'm willing to hold the review if the work will be done in a timely manner; if editors feel they cannot do so, please say so and I will close the review. (I will be happy to re-review later if desired.) Magic♪piano 18:47, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Thanks for your thorough review. I was actually able to find both of Husry's articles at my university's library and will add new sections and modify others the next few weeks.--Rafy talk 10:12, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

While I see that you have made significant progress on improving the article over the last few weeks, I think that a number of my issues are still unresolved. Since the review has now been open for close to three weeks (when nominal review time is one week), I feel it is time to close it. As I mentioned above, I'll be happy to review it again later (either formally or informally); just leave me a message. Magic♪piano 14:22, 12 October 2011 (UTC)