BAGHDAD, 22 April 2007 — Criticism mounted yesterday over a wall US troops are building around a Sunni enclave surrounded by Shiite areas in Baghdad, with residents calling it “collective punishment” and the local council leader saying the community did not approve the project before construction began.
The US military says the wall in the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah is meant to secure the neighborhood, which “has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.” The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits manned by Iraqi soldiers, the US military said in a statement earlier this week. But some residents were alarmed about the plan, and said they had not been consulted about the barrier being built in their own neighborhood.
“This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah,” said Ahmed Al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area. “They are going to punish all of us because of a few terrorists here and there.”
“We are in our fourth year of occupation and we are seeing the number of blast walls increasing day after day, suffocating the people more and more,” Dulaimi said in an interview.
Khalid Ibrahim, 45, said the Americans were working hard to divide Baghdad’s neighborhoods — something he said he wasn’t sure was a good thing. “This is good if it is temporary, to help the area with security problems. But if this wall stays for the long term, it will be a catastrophe for the residents and will restrict our movements,” said Ibrahim, an Azamiyah resident who works at the Interior Ministry.
The US military says it began building the barrier April 10 and hopes to finish it as soon as possible. Eventually, the military said, the wall will be five km long and include sections as tall as 3.5 meters. Community leaders said that construction began before they had approved an American proposal for the wall.
