US military to erect 3-mile-high wall across Baghdad

U.S. to cut off Baghdad neighborhood with barrier
Commanders hope the wall will prevent attacks on the Sunni Arab districts it surrounds.
By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer
7:39 PM PDT, April 19, 2007



BAGHDAD -- A U.S. military brigade is constructing a three-mile-long concrete wall to cut off one of the capital's most restive Sunni Arab districts from the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that surround it, raising concern about the further Balkanization of Iraq's most populous and violent city.

U.S. commanders in northern Baghdad say the 12-foot-high barrier will make it more difficult for suicide bombers, death squads and militia fighters from sectarian factions to attack one another and slip back to their home turf. Construction began last week and is expected to be completed by the end of the month.

Although Baghdad is replete with blast walls, checkpoints and other temporary barriers, including a massive wall around the Green Zone, the wall being constructed in Adhamiya would be the first to essentially divide a neighborhood by sect.

A largely Sunni district, Adhamiya is one of Baghdad's flashpoints, avoided by not only Shiites, but Sunni outsiders. The area is almost completely surrounded by Shiite-dominated districts.

The ambitious project is a sign of how far the U.S. military will go to end the non-stop bloodshed in Iraq. But U.S. officials said the barrier is not a central tactic of the ongoing U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown announced Feb. 13.

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