I found Ben Taub’s story on Khaled al-Halabi (the Syrian intelligence official who “disappeared” in Europe) to be fascinating. This comment doesn’t have to do with the content of the piece, but as I was reading, I was amazed by the technical execution of the article, especially the structure — even though I thought I was getting lost amidst all the details and acronyms of the story (not to mention the multiple time jumps and chronological reorderings) the final flow of events made clear narrative sense to me. Another technical note: It was amazing that Taub got so far with his reporting despite Khaled al-Halabi declining to speak with him — it’s a feat worthy of Gay Talese. Also, the inclusion of the detail about Brunner was really interesting — in some way, the detail makes it clear that this is not a story about wrongdoings of officials in the Syrian regime, but the wrongdoings of officials throughout history. Incidentally, Taub asserts at the beginning of the article that “the Austrian [Brunner] was a monster; the Syrian [al-Halabi], by most accounts, is not,” but after reading about al-Halabi’s alleged war crimes (including the torture device in Raqqa), I found myself wondering whether that assertion is perhaps a little too simple.
As for the content itself, I found myself wondering what the purpose of the piece was. It doesn’t seem like a profile; for one, al-Halabi never makes an appearance (except maybe on the balcony in the final paragraph), and we as readers never reach any satisfactory conclusion over what type of person al-Halabi is. We also have no concrete information regarding his thought process behind certain key actions — from deciding to flee to Turkey to agreeing to work for the Mossad. But at the same time, Taub’s piece doesn’t seem like an investigation, either: We hear about all sorts of wrongdoing (most egregiously in the BVT), but even the title of the article (“How a Syrian War Criminal and Double Agent Disappeared in Europe”) makes it clear that this piece isn’t meant to be a type of watchdog-style exposé of corruption. (Plus, Taub’s piece is deeply entertaining in many sections — I chuckled when al-Halabi tried to claim French asylum on the grounds of his alcoholism and secularism.) Taub’s piece doesn’t even feel like the New Yorker article we read from last week, which followed a single Afghan women through years of turmoil; the Afghanistan piece’s purpose felt like it was to describe the evolution of a country through a single vantage point, whereas Taub’s article never felt like it had any concrete narrative it wanted to tell — except to recount a crazy, John le Carré-esque saga, a là Isn’t this a wild story? The most substantial argument that Taub advances is regarding international criminal proceedings — he points out that al-Halabi (among other Syrian officials) have largely escaped prosecution, even in Europe.
All of this brings me to wonder — how (and why) did Taub begin reporting on this story in the first place? Also, was locating al-Halabi important for technical reasons (to interview him and flesh out the story) or important for narrative reasons (so readers could learn what had happened to him)?
