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March 23, 2007

Baghdad - Mapping the Violence

Last week, I was talking with some of the people studying the 'war on terror' at Durham. One response to reports of sectarian violence in Iraq was to note how maps of the country would soon be coloured in with nice, distinct areas for the different ethnic groups.

Bang on time, the BBC's Iraq Week has taken this somewhat further: providing an animated map of Baghdad which divides the city into nice, tidy sectarian areas. I'd argue that, at times like this, there's more need than ever for complex and complicating analyses to disrupt all these clear divisions - and to emphasise that, horrible though they are, attempts to ethnically cleanse parts of Iraq have not been altogether 'successful'.

It's maps like this that give geographers a bad name.

Posted by jon_mendel at March 23, 2007 01:45 AM

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