BAGHDAD - US troops are building a wall around a Sunni enclave in Baghdad, part of a strategy to ”break the cycle of sectarian violence” in the Iraqi capital. Work began on April 10 on the 5-km (3-mile) cement wall at Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni Arab area surrounded on three sides by Shia communities. “The wall is one of the centrepieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence,” Sergeant Mike Pryor, a public affairs officer, wrote in an article released by the US military.Senior US military officials in Baghdad said the wall was not intended to divide the capital into separate communities as part of a two-month-old security crackdown. Senior military officials said the crackdown would not include dividing the capital into Sunni Arab and Shia areas. “It is not the stated goal of the Baghdad security plan to divide everything up into these ... small gated communities,” military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said.
He said this was not “completely incongruous” with the wall at Adhamiya because local commanders could conduct operations appropriate to conditions on the ground.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that a similar project had started around Doura, another Sunni area in southern Baghdad. The article said Adhamiya had been trapped in “a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation” and work would continue on the wall, with barriers up to 12-feet (3.5-metres) tall.
Adhamiya is a small Sunni Arab enclave on the east bank of the Tigris River. Eastern Baghdad is predominantly Shia although there are some Sunni areas such as the nearby Fadhil district, a violent Sunni insurgent stronghold. While protecting Sunni Arabs who live in Adhamiya from attack by Shia militias, the wall would also stop Sunni militants launching attacks in Shia areas and then retreating back into Adhamiya, the article said. Traffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers will be the only way in and out of Adhamiya once the wall was finished.