[Marxism] Palestine, Mexico, and now Iraq: No problem so difficult that a wall wib't solve it

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, the Iraqis may just tear it down when the US finally leaves, but I
think a case could be made for keeping (with some openings, of course) as a
monument to the way US occupation has scarred and devastated this country.
Article also has interesting material on Gates' hints of differences with
Bush-Cheney. All are agreed, though, that if the occupation fails, it is, of
course, those awful Iraqis' FAULT. 
Fred Feldman


U.S. ERECTS BAGHDAD WALL TO KEEP SECTS APART By Edward Wong and David S.
Cloud

New York Times
April 21, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/world/middleeast/21iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slo
gin

BAGHDAD -- American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new
strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a
12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from
Shiite neighborhoods.

Soldiers in the Adhamiya district of northern Baghdad, a Sunni Arab
stronghold, began construction of the wall last week and expect to finish it
within a month. Iraqi Army soldiers would then control movement through a
few checkpoints.  The wall has already drawn intense criticism from
residents of the neighborhood, who say that it will increase sectarian
tensions and that it is part of a plan by the Shiite-led Iraqi government to
box in the minority Sunnis.

A doctor in Adhamiya, Abu Hassan, said the wall would transform the
residents into caged animals.

"It's unbelievable that they treat us in such an inhumane manner," he said
in a telephone interview.  "They're trying to isolate us from other parts of
Baghdad.  The hatred will be much greater between the two sects."

"The Native Americans were treated better than us," he added.

The American military said in a written statement that "the wall is one of
the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break
the cycle of sectarian violence."

As soldiers pushed forward with the construction, Defense Secretary Robert
M. Gates insisted to the Iraqi government that it had to pass by late summer
a series of measures long sought by the White House that were aimed at
advancing reconciliation between the warring Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs.

Whether Parliament meets that benchmark could affect a decision that the
Bush administration plans to make in late summer on extending the nearly
30,000 additional troops ordered to Iraq earlier this year, Mr. Gates said.

His words were the bluntest yet by an American official in tying the
American military commitment here to the Iraqi political process.  It
reflected a growing frustration among Bush administration officials at
Iraq's failure to move on the political elements of the new strategy. 
President Bush's new security plan here is aimed at buying time for the
feuding Iraqi factions to come to political settlements that would, in
theory, reduce the violence.

In recent weeks, Democrats in Congress have been intensifying pressure on
the president, through negotiations on financing for the war, to set
political deadlines for the Iraqis and tie them to the withdrawal of
American troops.

Speaking to reporters after talks with the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, Mr. Gates urged Parliament not to adjourn for a planned summer
recess without passing legislation on sharing oil revenues, easing the
purges of former Baath Party members from government positions, and setting
a date for provincial elections.

"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," he said, adding
that he told Mr. Maliki that "progress in reconciliation will be an
important element of our evaluation in the late summer."

This is not the first time the Bush administration has set a timetable for
Iraq to pass the reconciliation measures.  Late last year, the White House
gave the Iraqi government a goal of March to pass the legislation.  March
came and went, and senior administration officials shrugged off the missed
target, saying it was counterproductive to press the Iraqis on the issue.

Mr. Gates's demand, with its strong hint of conditions attached, could force
the Bush administration into a corner.

If progress on the reconciliation measures proves impossible before the
target date, as many Iraqi politicians say they believe, American officials
will have to decide whether to follow through with the veiled threat.
American military commanders have already indicated privately that it may be
necessary to extend the troop reinforcements because the time between now
and August is not be long enough for the new strategy to work.

A senior White House official in Washington said that Mr. Gates had not
threatened to remove American troops if Mr. Maliki cannot act by midsummer.
Instead, the official argued, "He simply said what everyone has said, which
is that the process of political accommodation has to speed up."

President Bush spoke with Mr. Maliki in a secure video conference on Monday
morning and also emphasized the need to pass the legislation, aides said.

Mr. Maliki's office issued a statement on Friday saying that the prime
minister was confident that steps toward reconciliation could be achieved
this year.

Mr. Gates delivered his message at the end of a week of major political
turmoil and security setbacks for Mr. Maliki's government.  Mr. Maliki's
strongest political supporter, the firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr,
withdrew his six ministers from the cabinet.  Car bombs in Baghdad killed at
least 171 people on Wednesday, puncturing Iraqi confidence in the security
plan.

Ceaseless violence is what led American commanders in Adhamiya to build a
wall to break contact between Sunnis and Shiites.  It is the first time the
Americans have tried a project of that scope in Baghdad.  The soldiers
jokingly call it "The Great Wall of Adhamiya," according to military
officials.

Commanders have sealed off a few other neighborhoods into what they call
"gated communities," but not with a lengthy wall.  In the earlier efforts,
American and Iraqi soldiers placed concrete barriers blocking off roads
leading into the neighborhoods and left open one or more avenues of egress
where people and vehicles were searched.

Soldiers did that to a degree in the volatile district of Dora during a
security push there last summer.  More recently, American and Iraqi Army
units have closed off almost all roads into the western Sunni Arab
neighborhoods of Amiriya and Daoudi.  Residents of Amiriya say violence
dropped when the roads were first blocked off late last year, but has
gradually increased again.  [See an Apr. 5 *Wall Street Journal*
report(http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/6049/) on a similar project
involving the Sunni section of Abu Dasheer, a south Baghdad neighborhood. 
--H.A.]

Adhamiya is different, because it involves the building of a three-mile wall
along streets on its eastern flank.  It consists of a series of concrete
barriers, each weighing 14,000 pounds, that have been transported down to
Baghdad in flatbed trucks from Camp Taji, north of the city. 
Soldiers are using cranes to put the barriers in place.

Once the wall is complete, Iraqi Army soldiers will operate entry and exit
checkpoints, Capt. Marc Sanborn, a brigade engineer for the Second Brigade,
82nd Airborne Division, said in a news release on the project issued this
week by the American military.


The wall "is on a fault line of Sunni and Shia, and the idea is to curb some
of the self-sustaining violence by controlling who has access to the
neighborhoods," Captain Sanborn said.

Adhamiya has been rife with violence throughout the war.  It is a stalwart
Sunni Arab neighborhood, home to the hard-line Abu Hanifa mosque, and the
last place where Saddam Hussein made a public appearance before he went into
hiding in 2003.  Shiite militiamen from Sadr City and other Shiite enclaves
to the east often attack its residents, and Sunni insurgent groups battle
there among themselves.

"Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across
the street," Capt. Scott McLearn, an operations officer in the area, said in
a written statement.

Abu Hassan, the doctor in Adhamiya, said his neighborhood "is a small area."

"The Americans and Iraqi government should be able to control it" without
building a wall, he said.

Many Sunnis across Baghdad complain that the Shiite-led government has
choked off basic services to their neighborhoods, allowing trash to pile up
in the streets, banks to shut down, and health clinics to languish.  So the
wall raises fears of further isolation.

A spokesman for the American military, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV,
said at a news conference on Wednesday that the military did not have a
policy of sealing off neighborhoods.

The American military has tried sealing off entire cities during the war. 
The most famous example is Fallujah, in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar
Province, where marines began operating checkpoints on all main roads into
and out of the city after laying siege to it in late 2004.

On Friday, a child was killed and nine people were wounded in a mortar
attack in Baghdad, and 19 bodies were found across the capital.  Hospital
officials in Mosul said they were treating 130 Iraqi Army trainees suffering
from stomach illness, in a possible case of mass poisoning at a training
center north of the city.

An American soldier was killed and two wounded in a rocket attack on a base
in Mahmudiya on Thursday night, the military said.

--Sahar Nageeb and Ahmad Fadam contributed reporting from Baghdad, and David
E. Sanger from Washington.



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