IRAQ:US officials have suspended work on a 12ft barrier cordoning off a large Sunni-dominated area in Baghdad, writes Mohamad Bazzi
For Sale: two-family home with garden in an exclusive gated community in the heart of Baghdad. Round-the-clock security. Neighbours will share your religious beliefs.
That fictional ad might as well be circulating in the Iraqi capital. It reflects the spin that the US military tried to put on its plan to build a three-mile concrete wall to cordon off a large, Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighbourhood.
The flippant tone was set in the first line of the April 17th news release announcing the barrier: "According to an old proverb, good fences make good neighbours. Paratroopers with the 82nd airborne division are putting that idea to the test in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district." The release went on to quote a soldier: "The concept is closer to an exclusive gated community in the US than it is to China's great wall."
But what soldiers jokingly called the "Great Wall of Adhamiyah" has turned into another fiasco for the US military in Iraq. It showed poor American planning, generated huge anger in Iraq and the wider Arab world, evoked comparisons to the separation wall built by Israel to cordon off much of the West Bank, and underscored how out of touch US officials are with the sectarian undercurrents in Iraq.
"This creates new sectarian boundaries on the ground, and it reinforces divisions between Sunnis and Shias. It's very dangerous," said Fadel Rubaie, an Iraqi political analyst.
"And it's incredible that the Americans did not see the parallels to the Israeli wall."
After the uproar from Sunnis and Shias alike, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged to stop construction of the barrier. "I fear that this wall might have repercussions which remind us of other walls, which we reject," he said.
US officials have suspended work on the 12ft (3.7m) barrier and might stop the project altogether. Adhamiyah, one of Baghdad's oldest neighbourhoods, is surrounded by Shia districts.
"Like other religiously divided regions in the city, the area has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation," said the April 17th military statement.
"Shias are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street."
With a concrete barrier and checkpoints, the US military argued, it would be easier for American and Iraqi forces to control who goes in and out of Adhamiyah. Military experts note that such a strategy would require tying up large numbers of US or Iraqi troops who are needed elsewhere in Baghdad.
But even with a large commitment of troops, the strategy might not work.
"Gated areas can become sanctuaries for those insurgents or militia forces that live within them and then attack targets outside them," wrote Anthony Cordesman, an expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
"The security problem is not simply who goes in. It is who is inside and who goes out."
Since the insurgency began in 2003, almost every building in Baghdad that could be a potential target for car bombs has been surrounded by concrete barriers. Last month US troops built fortifications around Dora, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Baghdad that was the scene of intense sectarian violence.
And, after US troops recaptured Falluja in late 2004, the city was cordoned off with tightly controlled checkpoints and a new ID system for residents. But the violence then moved to the city's outskirts. - (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post service)