Iraqi Premier Orders Work Stopped On Wall

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 23, 2007
By Alissa J. Rubin
BAGHDAD, April 22 — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Sunday that he was ordering a halt to construction of a controversial wall that would block a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad from other areas, saying it reminded people of “other walls.”
The announcement, which he made in Cairo while on a state visit, appeared intended to allay mounting criticism from both Sunni Arab and Shiite parties about the project.
“I oppose the building of the wall, and its construction will stop,” Mr. Maliki told reporters during a joint news conference with the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. “There are other methods to protect neighborhoods.”
A spokesman for the American military, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, said the military would remain “in a dialogue” with the Iraqi government about how best to protect citizens. The military did not say whether the wall’s construction would be halted.
Mr. Maliki did not specify in his remarks what other walls he referred to. However, the separation barrier in the West Bank being erected by Israel, which Israel says is for protection but greatly angers Palestinians, is a particularly delicate issue among Arabs.
In Baghdad, the wall would surround the Adhamiya neighborhood, a Sunni Arab enclave bordered by Shiite areas. Adhamiya often comes under mortar attack and suffers incursions from those neighborhoods. However, it has also been a stronghold of militant Sunni Arab groups, and the wall would have helped the Iraqi security forces to control their movements.
Earlier on Sunday, the spokesman for the American military in Iraq sought to allay criticism of the project and explain its intent by saying that it was meant to be only a temporary barrier to improve security.
The military does not have a new strategy of building walls or creating “gated communities,” the spokesman, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said in a written statement. He described it as a tactic being used in only a handful of neighborhoods and not an effort to divide the city, much less the country.
However, American military officials said last week in a statement that the Adhamiya wall was “one of the centerpieces of a new strategy.” They also said that the wall was aimed at separating Sunni Arabs in Adhamiya from Shiites to the east.
Opposition to the wall has gathered steam since the news release was issued, and on Sunday, Sunni Arab and Shiite groups sharply criticized the idea. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party and the Shiite group linked to the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr both announced that they opposed dividing Baghdad by sect. In sharp statements, they said the wall would increase sectarian hatred and fuel efforts to partition the country.
“Surrounding areas of the capital with barbed wire and concrete blocks would harm these areas economically and socially,” the Islamic Party said in an e-mail message to news organizations. “In addition, it will enhance sectarian feelings.”
Abu Firas al-Mutairi, a representative of the Sadr movement in Najaf, which has supported Mr. Maliki, said: “The Sadr movement considers building a wall around Al Adhamiya as a way to lay siege to the Iraqi people and to separate them into cantons. It is like the Berlin Wall that divided Germany.”
“This step is the first step toward dividing the regions into cantons and blockading people there,” he added. “Today it happens in Adhamiya. Tomorrow it will happen in Sadr City,” referring to the Shiite slum in Baghdad that is a stronghold of Mr. Sadr.
The wall, which was being built as part of the security plan, had been a joint project with the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi government has the final say over how the security plan proceeds, but most policies are being intensively negotiated with the Americans, who are deploying nearly 30,000 additional troops to help secure Baghdad and the surrounding areas.
Mr. Maliki’s announcement came as sectarian violence continued across Iraq, with a horrific execution by Sunni Arabs in Mosul of 23 members of a small religious sect, known as Yezidis.
The Yezidis, who are most numerous in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, practice an offshoot of Islam that combines some Muslim teachings with those of ancient Persian religion.
At least 60 people died Sunday in Iraq, with 18 killed by car bombs in Baghdad. Eleven bodies were found in the capital and five in the city of Kut, to the south.
But the most chilling attack was the one in Mosul. It followed the marriage in early April of a Sunni Arab man and a woman from the Yezidi faith, the police said.
The police said that when the woman married, she converted to Islam, which angered some of the Yezidis. She was kidnapped and as she was being brought back to her tribe, a crowd gathered and stoned her to death, said Brig. Gen. Muhammad al-Waqa of the Mosul police.
The Sunni Arabs in the area demanded that the Yezidis turn over the killers, and the police also put out a warrant for their arrest. In one Yezidi-majority town east of Mosul, residents found leaflets saying, “Unless you turn them over, we will never let any Yezidi breathe the air.”
The Yezidis refused. On Sunday afternoon, armed men stopped minibuses traveling from a government textile factory in Mosul, where many Yezidis and Christians were known to work. The men dragged the passengers off the buses, checked their identity cards and lined the Yezidis up against a wall and shot them, killing 23 people and wounding three, General Waqa said.
In Falluja, in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, the City Council chairman, Sami al-Jumaili, was assassinated Sunday. He was the fifth council chairman in Falluja to lose his life while in the job since the war began. The militant group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia has attacked those who work with the government, the police or the Iraqi Army in Anbar.
A relative of Mr. Jumaili who spoke anonymously because he feared retribution described him as “an educated man who went to medical school.”
“He accepted the job because he trusts people and wanted to help the city,” the relative said. “Many people refused the job. The family warned him that the job was dangerous. And, many of his predecessors had been killed. He answered that he had not harmed anyone.”
The American military released a statement on Sunday saying two soldiers had been killed in separate attacks on Saturday, one in Baghdad and another southwest of the capital.
Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Mosul and Falluja.
 
Back
Top