Military puts up walls in Baghdad
At least two insurgent groups are battling al-Qaida outside Baghdad, U.S. commanders said.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The United States military has begun sealing off Baghdad neighborhoods with concrete walls in a controversial new strategy intended to calm Baghdad's sectarian flash points, but residents fear the barriers could deepen divisions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
Seven so-called "gated communities" have been or are being built, according to military officials, and more may be coming under the wide-ranging Baghdad security crackdown launched nine weeks ago.
Officials said the walls would help create islands of security by controlling the flow of people and vehicles in some of the city's most violent neighborhoods, and by keeping armed groups from using the areas as launching pads or targets for attacks.
But residents say the barriers actually increase their feelings of isolation and make them feel like targets.
"Don't they realize that when the Baghdad neighborhoods become either Sunni or Shiite, they will become even more vulnerable?" said Yassir Ismail, a 34-year-old Sunni resident of Adhamiyah, one of the areas where the U.S. is putting up barriers. "Extremists from both sides -- or mercenaries -- will have no more qualms. ... They will bomb each other to kingdom come."
U.S. response
U.S. officials acknowledged that the gated communities would wall sects off from one another, but they said they were a temporary measure. They're being built in consultation with Iraqi security forces and community leaders, officials said.
"Some of these enclaves will be more heavily ethnic in one respect, but the intent is to protect the population, not to form sectarian enclaves," said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a U.S. military spokesman. "There's no long-term strategy to divide up the entire city."
Baghdad already is segregated beyond recognition, with Shiites and Sunnis huddling among their own in once-mixed neighborhoods, often relying for protection on whichever armed group dominates the area. Much of the city's devastating violence originates from these heavily militarized redoubts.
Besides Adhamiyah, barriers are going up in Ghaziliyah, Khadra and Ameriyah in western Baghdad -- all Sunni areas -- and three are being built in the southern Rashid district in locations that officials didn't specify.
Military officials said it's only coincidence that so many of the enclaves are Sunni. Bleichwehl said that the decision to erect barriers rests with commanders in the field.
"Commanders will continually reassess how these things are working," Bleichwehl said. "Adjustments will be made."
In Adhamiyah, residents bitterly compare the wall to the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank.
"This I have seen before on the news -- in Palestine," said Yassir Ismail, a 34-year-old Sunni resident of Adhamiyah. "They built a wall there, too. And there used to be another wall in Germany. That one got torn down."
Developments
In other developments:
U.S. helicopters pounded an area near a Shiite mosque with heavy machine-gun fire Friday, killing two militants just ahead of the start of weekly prayer services and outraging preachers loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. No coalition casualties were reported, and damage to the mosque was limited to several bullet holes, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
At least two major insurgent groups are battling al-Qaida in provinces outside Baghdad, American military commanders said Friday, an indication of a deepening rift between Sunni guerrilla groups in Iraq. U.S. officers say a growing number of Sunni tribes are turning against al-Qaida, repelled by the terror group's sheer brutality and austere religious extremism. "This is a big turning point," U.S. Maj. David Baker said Friday in the Diyala provincial capital of Baqouba. "If they are fighting against each other, it's better than them fighting against us."
Stressing the limits of U.S. patience, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday the Bush administration will weigh Iraq's political progress in deciding this summer whether to bring home some of the U.S. troops. "Our commitment to Iraq is long-term, but it is not a commitment to have our young men and women patrolling Iraq's streets open-endedly," Gates told U.S. and Iraqi reporters at a news conference in the capital.