From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

Which is more politically acceptable, walls or death squads roaming at will?

You decide...

Adam

Rich Gauszka wrote:
> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21604280-2703,00.html
>
> IN a fresh clash with his American allies, the Iraqi Prime Minister has
> ordered the US military to halt the construction of concrete walls being
> built around some of the most violent neighbourhoods in Baghdad.
>
> Nouri al-Maliki, the Shia leader, stepped in as Sunni communities complained
> that their neighbourhoods were being turned into ghettoes that could choke
> off life in their areas.
>
> "I oppose the building of the wall, and its construction will
stop," he said
> during a visit to Egypt yesterday. "There are other methods to protect
> neighbourhoods."
>
> The US military had started to build concrete walls around five Baghdad
> neighbourhoods, most of them Sunni, in an attempt to stop car bombers
> leaving them and death squads infiltrating them.
>
> Mr al-Maliki, who has often been at odds with his US backers over security
> policy in the capital, said that "this wall reminds us of other
walls", in
> an apparent reference to the Israeli wall running through the Palestinian
> West Bank.
>
> Sunnis living in the newly sealed-off enclaves had complained that the walls
> would cause severe traffic congestion and entrench the sectarian rift
> already dividing many Sunni from Shia areas.
>
>
> "Ad"  wrote in message
> news:462c5c33$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>> http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=20462
>>
>> I did say a while back that they should build city walls around trouble
>> spots so as to "protect & control"....I was thinking
about whole
>> towns/cities e.g. Ramadi....but here is an internal wall....
>>
>> "Residents of Sunni Baghdad district on Saturday accused US
forces walling
>> them in behind a five-kilometre (three-mile) security barrier of hardening
>> the city's already bitter sectarian divisions.
>>
>> On April 10, US paratroopers began hauling six-tonne (14,000-pound)
>> sections of concrete wall into place around the Sunni district of
>> Adhamiyah, one of the minority community's last enclaves in Shiite east
>> Baghdad.
>>
>> The wall is designed to prevent Shiite death squads from launching attacks
>> to drive out the Sunnis, and to prevent Sunni insurgents from using the
>> pocket as a base for raids and bombing runs into Shiite areas.
>>
>> Eleven days after the project began, the highway dividing Adhamiyah from
>> its Shiite neighbours is lined with tall concrete barriers. A US military
>> statement issued on Tuesday said troops would work nightly until it is
>> completed.
>>
>> "The idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence by
controlling
>> who has access to the neighbourhoods," said Captain Marc Sanborn, a
>> military engineer from the 82nd Airborne Division, according to the US
>> statement.
>>
>> The area is to become what the US military called a "gated
community"
>> protected by barriers and checkpoints manned by Iraqi troops."
>>
>>
>> Adam
>
>

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