Shiites fleeing Sunni dominated neighborhoods of Baghdad

Shiites fleeing Sunni dominated neighborhoods of Baghdad
By Nancy A. Youssef and Mohammed al Dulaimy, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The ethnic cleansing of Baghdad neighborhoods is proceeding at an alarming and potentially destabilizing pace.

Some Shiite Muslim residents in predominantly Sunni Muslim Baghdad neighborhoods are fleeing their homes because they say the country's violence and sectarian tensions have reached their front doors, forcing them to move into more homogenous communities.

Government officials and academic experts agree that the virtual expulsion of some ethnic groups from mixed communities is troubling and threatens the nation's stability, which depends on a degree of ethnic harmony. Some worry the purges are setting the early stages of civil war, saying that homogenous neighborhoods could become future battlegrounds in the capital.

Indeed, some government officials concede that insurgents, mainly Sunnis, are controlling parts of Baghdad.

"Civil war today is closer than any time before," said Hazim Abdel Hamid al Nuaimi, a professor of politics at al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. "All of these explosions, the efforts by police and purging of neighborhoods is a battle to control Baghdad."

"To the extent that families are moving out, neighborhood by neighborhood, that itself is a sign of civil war," said Noah Feldman, a constitutional expert at New York University who visited Iraq in 2003 with American officials.

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