Friday, April 20, 2007
Three-mile wall to protect Sunni part of Baghdad
Security
(AP) - U.S. soldiers are building a three-mile wall to protect a Sunni Arab enclave surrounded by Shiite neighborhoods in a Baghdad area "trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation," the military said.
When the wall is finished, the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, will be completely gated, and traffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers will provide the only means to enter it, the military said.
"Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street," said Capt. Scott McLearn, of the U.S. 407th Brigade Support Battalion, which began the project April 10 and is working "almost nightly until the wall is complete," the statement said. It said the concrete wall, including barriers as tall as 12 feet, "is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence" in Baghdad.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have long erected cement barriers around marketplaces and coalition bases and outposts in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities such as Ramadi in an effort to prevent attacks, including suicide car bombs. American forces also have constructed huge sand barriers around towns such as Tal Afar, an insurgent stronghold near the Syrian border, to limit access to them.
The Wall Street Journal reported on April 5 that U.S. forces in the mostly Sunni area of Dora in southern Baghdad had erected massive concrete barriers to separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in an effort to stop widespread sectarian violence there. And Britain's Independent newspaper reported April 11 that U.S. forces are planning a counterinsurgency operation that would seal off large areas of Baghdad, using barricades to create "gated communities" that could only be entered with newly issued ID cards.
Currently, the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq involves getting Iraqis to reconcile and support the democratically elected Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, and a security plan in the capital that calls for 28,000 additional American troops and thousands of Iraqi soldiers. U.S. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, was quoted as saying Wednesday that he was unaware of any effort to build a wall dividing Shiite and Sunni enclaves in Baghdad and that such a tactic was not a policy of the Baghdad security plan.
When the wall is finished, the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, will be completely gated, and traffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers will provide the only means to enter it, the military said.
"Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street," said Capt. Scott McLearn, of the U.S. 407th Brigade Support Battalion, which began the project April 10 and is working "almost nightly until the wall is complete," the statement said. It said the concrete wall, including barriers as tall as 12 feet, "is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence" in Baghdad.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have long erected cement barriers around marketplaces and coalition bases and outposts in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities such as Ramadi in an effort to prevent attacks, including suicide car bombs. American forces also have constructed huge sand barriers around towns such as Tal Afar, an insurgent stronghold near the Syrian border, to limit access to them.
The Wall Street Journal reported on April 5 that U.S. forces in the mostly Sunni area of Dora in southern Baghdad had erected massive concrete barriers to separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in an effort to stop widespread sectarian violence there. And Britain's Independent newspaper reported April 11 that U.S. forces are planning a counterinsurgency operation that would seal off large areas of Baghdad, using barricades to create "gated communities" that could only be entered with newly issued ID cards.
Currently, the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq involves getting Iraqis to reconcile and support the democratically elected Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, and a security plan in the capital that calls for 28,000 additional American troops and thousands of Iraqi soldiers. U.S. Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, was quoted as saying Wednesday that he was unaware of any effort to build a wall dividing Shiite and Sunni enclaves in Baghdad and that such a tactic was not a policy of the Baghdad security plan.
Labels: Azamiyah, Capt. Scott McLearn, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell
