Iraq:
Construction of Walls ... A New “Strategy” of the U.S. Army

Apr 30, 2007

On April 22, hundreds of inhabitants of Adhamiya, a Sunni neighborhood in predominately Shiite eastern Baghdad, demonstrated against the construction of a wall surrounding their neighborhood. Even Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki protested against the project. The inhabitants of Adhamiya are afraid of being isolated and accuse the U.S. army of wanting to imprison them, a little like the Palestinians behind the wall which Israel built on the West Bank.

This wall in Baghdad was the brainchild of top U.S. army officers who ordered it built. This so-called security wall will be ten feet high and three miles long. It is supposed to protect the inhabitants against suicide bombers driving cars loaded with explosives. Construction began on April 10. They’re planning on building additional walls, surrounding other Baghdad neighborhoods, separating the different communities.

A U.S. military statement said that the wall is “one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”

We know what the old strategy has led to: U.S. intervention plunged the country into bloody chaos, and for four years, the different Sunni and Shiite factions have carried out terrorist attacks to extend their zone of influence. The civilian population has paid dearly, with every day bringing dozens more dead and hundreds more wounded, on top of increased misery from the economic collapse.

This is what the supposed return to democracy as conceived by the U.S. general staff has led to: creating zones in which the inhabitants have a very fragile security wall because they are shut in behind 10 feet-high walls, under the permanent control of heavily armed soldiers, and where they’ll have to confront the hatred that this treatment excites in other neighborhoods.