https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women
Article: The Other Afghan Women by Anand Gopal
Article Lead:
In the countryside, the endless killing of civilians turned women against the occupiers who claimed to be helping them.
Late one afternoon this past August, Shakira heard banging on her front gate. In the Sangin Valley, which is in Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan, women must not be seen by men who aren’t related to them, and so her nineteen-year-old son, Ahmed, went to the gate. Outside were two men in bandoliers and black turbans, carrying rifles. They were members of the Taliban, who were waging an offensive to wrest the countryside back from the Afghan National Army. One of the men warned, “If you don’t leave immediately, everyone is going to die.”
My thoughts: I couldn’t quite decide if the first sentence after the heading was already the lead or the first paragraph so I assume it’s both. I think the first sentence works more in a hard-news way, by briefly summarizing the topic of the article. The anecdote in the first paragraph is more of a feature lead, meant as a way to draw the reader in.
In my opinion, the anecdote does a good job raising the interest of the reader. There is enough information to understand the who, when, and what but it leaves the reader wondering about why everyone will die if they don’t leave immediately. I think it sets the scene well and gives the reader a sense of the danger of the situation.
My Leads:
The Snappy: Routine in rural Afghanistan: Leave your house or die.
The Magazine: “If you don’t leave immediately, everyone is going to die.” – Last August was not Shakira’s first time being faced with such a statement or the danger that was to follow it. In her 40 years of life, the Afghan woman from the Sangin valley encountered death, violence, and destruction in many different forms and from various sources of aggression. The Soviet Army, local mujahideen factions, American forces, and the Taliban – all had brought some form of violence to Afghanistan and to Shakira’s neighborhood. In this ever-changing power struggle, it had become difficult for Afghans to tell friends from enemies.
The Standard: For many Afghan women living in the country’s conservative rural areas, the Taliban have gone from loathed enemies to restorers of order.
I like them all, Emily. It sometimes seems odd to treat hard news stories as features, but this example opens lots of possibilities. I think the original is too slow getting to that important quote. Maybe it should be more “snappy.”