[NYTr] Under siege: what the surge really means in Baghdad

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Independent - Sep 10, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2947410.ece


Under siege: what the surge really means in Baghdad

By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad

A city divided by high concrete walls, barbed wire and checkpoints;
armoured columns moving through deserted evening streets lit by the
glow of searchlights and emptied by official curfew and fear. This is
Baghdad, seven months into the surge, and George Bush's last throw of
the dice in Iraq.

On the surface, the Iraqi capital is less overtly violent than it used
to be. The number of car bombings have fallen to "only" 23 a month from
42 in the same period last year, there are fewer sounds of explosions
and gunfire than in the past, and there is, generally, less tension.
And some of that must be due to the presence of more troops.

But for many Iraqis, the Americans have turned their land into a
prison. The barriers, which have turned Baghdad into a series of
ghettos, are meant to keep the bombers out, but they also keep
residents penned in. People may feel safer inside their neighbourhoods,
but are more wary of venturing outside them. A short journey across the
city can take hours with roads blocked off and numerous checkpoints,
discouraging people from visiting relations and friends and reinforcing
the sense of isolation.

Commerce, which the Americans are so keen to re-establish, now requires
traders to hire different drivers for different areas, although one
form of business which thrives is the levying of unofficial "taxes" by
armed groups operating with little or no interference from the security
forces. At first the Americans welcomed the vigilante groups, calling
them "guardians", but this has been tempered by tales of extortion.

Yesterday at a regional conference in Baghdad, attended by Iran and
Syria, Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, insisted his government
has made progress "in all directions".

The intense security around the conference created a gridlock in Baghdad
with people striving to do their daily shopping before the evening
curfew. C oming out of a store in the Karada district, Mariam al-Nasari
viewed the situation with despair. "Nothing has been achieved," she
said. "Why are they having foreign leaders here in their big cars when
they should be doing something for the people of this country. They say
things are getting safer, but I do not think so. You have a few days of
little happening and then a big bomb. There are other problems, schools
are shut, we cannot get to the hospitals. I have to go home now, I do
not have the time to do all I need to do, we are always being delayed
by the walls."

The walls, being put up by American contractors at a record speed, are
formalising the break up of Baghdad. The city where Sunni, Shia and
Christians once lived in comparative social amity - although not the
same access to political power - is now so divided along sectarian
lines that it may be impossible ever to reunify it.

Shia fighters have driven out Sunni families from areas such as Huriya,
Shaab and Shalla. The Sunnis, in turn, have done the same to the Shias
in places such as Khradrah, Amil and Jamiya. The properties are the
source of more funding for the militias who organise their rentals. The
Mehdi Army, led by the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has been in
the forefront of this ethnic cleansing, having to do little apart from
put red markings on Sunni homes they want, a message the owners seldom
argue with.

Residents seeing their neighbours being driven out are too afraid to do
anything. At Huriya, which has lost all its Sunni households, Hakim
al-Karim, a 42-year-old computer software designer, said "We know a man
who was killed because he was a Sunni and they wanted his house. No one
did anything, but do not blame us, there is nothing we could do. If
they find out they will kill you. Who are you going to go to? The
Americans? They are not going to stay in my street to protect my
family. The police? You don't even know who they really work for."

The purge of the neighbourhoods have helped bring down the number of
violent deaths, driving people out means there are fewer sectarian
targets left for the militias to kill.

In Amariya, now a wholly Sunni area, 59-year-old Farah Husseini wanted
to talk about how much she missed her grandchildren. "They are in
Khadra, I want to go there, but my husband says it is too dangerous, we
cannot move around the city now and they cannot come here either."

Negotiating the militia checkpoints continues to be a lottery despite
American claims to have cracked down on them. Omar Rashid, who regularly
travels to Amman by road from Baghdad said: "The checkpoints in the
west of Baghdad to the Jordanian border are controlled by Sunnis. They
ask your name and if it is Ali there are problems because Ali is a Shia
name. But then there are Sunnis also called Ali. So then they ask you
about your tribe. It can be dangerous to get the answers wrong."