The wall, which is made of 12-foot chunks of concrete, is intended to keep Sunni militants in Adhamiya away from their counterparts in the surrounding Shia neighborhoods–and to prevent civilians from getting caught up in the crossfire. The flip tone of the initial military press release announcing the construction of the wall shows they may not have been ready for the blowback. “According to an old proverb, good fences make good neighbors,” the release begins. One soldier quoted explains “-the concept is closer to an exclusive gated community in the U.S. than it is to China’s great wall.” And toward the bottom of the release, “It took Chinese laborers hundreds of years to create the Great Wall. The 407th BSB [Brigade Support Battalion] hopes to be finished with its wall in a month.”
Iraqis inside the “exclusive community” see it differently. Some residents complain that they were never consulted about the barrier, others claim that Sunnis are being singled out. Some worry that the barrier will not only keep militants out but also potential customers. “For me, it means no business any more,” says Hayder, a 37-year old shop-owner in the area. “Adhamiya as a commercial center will officially die.” Arabic media outlets are already calling the Adhamiya barrier or separation wall, a reference to the wall that Israelis have built to separate them from Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
Fortified concrete barriers, usually called T-walls, are hardly new to Baghdad. Since 2003, almost every structure that could be a potential target for car bombs has been surrounded by walls or fortifications of some kind. And the wall in Adhamiya, which U.S. military officials insist is temporary, isn’t the first test case of the gated community strategy. Barriers were built around the violence-plagued neighborhood of Dora last month. And, after the U.S. military re-invaded Fallujah at the end of 2004, the entire city was largely cordoned off with tightly controlled entry and exit points and a new ID system for city residents. In Fallujah, the restrictive security measures seem to have yielded some measure of success by cutting attacks on American troops, though attacks in the area surrounding the city periodically flare up.
There’s little doubt that General David Petraeus, who wrote the Army’s latest manual on counter-insurgency, is familiar with similar measures that failed in Vietnam and Algeria. It remains to be seen how well this strategy will work in Iraq. For now, the biggest battle may be convincing residents that it’s for their own good. “We don’t want to be isolated from the Shiite areas around us because it isn’t ordinary people that attack each other. It’s the criminals and that is what should be treated,” says Abu Yasser. “What will the next step be if this doesn’t work out? Individual houses surrounded by blocks? What kind of life is this?” (Late on Sunday night, the Al-Hurra channel announced that prime minister Nouri al Maliki had stepped in and called the project off. But there was no official statement from the prime minister’s office and it is unclear whether the protests will go ahead as planned.)
Photo: A section of the Adhamiya wall. (Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters)
