Schoolboys walk along a concrete wall on a street
in Adhamiya district in Baghdad April 22, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters
Photo) Photo Gallery
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BAGHDAD,
April 27 (Xinhua) -- The building of a five-km-long wall surrounding a Sunni
neighborhood in northern Baghdad apparently continued despite the opposition of
local residents and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Qasim Att, spokesman of an ongoing security crackdown
in the capital, said that the defense ministry had a "firm opinion" about the
plan of building the wall, aiming at enclosing Baghdad's northern district of
Adhamiyah, where tit-for-tat sectarian violence is threatening to spiral out of
control.
Atta's remarks came after al-Maliki openly called on
Sunday for the halt of the separation wall, saying he opposed it, pushing the
security forces to mull over alternatives.
"The order of the prime minister is implemented
accurately and we have found alternatives for the walls," Atta said, insisting
that all kinds of barriers are movable and temporary, which means it could be
barbed wires, dirt walls or even trenches.
On April 10, U.S. soldiers began building a concrete
wall surrounding the Adhamiyah district. When the wall is finished, Adhamiyah
will be completely gated, and traffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers
will provide the only means to enter it.
However, the plan has incurred strong criticism from
Iraqi politicians and local residents.
The Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni political
organization, condemned the plan.
Politicians loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr, whose militia is accused of getting involved in attacks on Sunni
civilians, also denounced the plan.
Talal al-Samarrie, 50, a government employee,
complained that daily killings and deteriorated services make living in the
neighborhood almost impossible and the solution should be political one.
"If they really want to stop all this daily killing
and chaos, the road is clear, it is a political compromise among all those
wrestling factions," Samarraie said.
"The government is not serious with national
reconciliation and I know the Americans try to practice pressures on those
factions to bring them to the table," he concluded.
Muhammad al-Wardi, a Shiite resident in Kadhimiyah
neighborhood,rejected the construction of the walls, accusing the media of
ignoring the demonstrations in Shiite district about the Adhamiyah wall.
"We reject surrounding our brothers the Iraqis in
Adhamiyah and I blame you why not saying anything about our demonstrations in
Kadhmiyah and Sadr City neighborhood," Wardi said.
Although the Americans and the Iraqi government
insisted that the walls are temporary, residents of Adhamiyah think that
temporary walls have a way of becoming permanent, just like the Israeli barriers
in the West Bank.
"It would be just like the Israeli segregation walls
in the West Bank, justified as a security measure but actually they represent a
permanent seizure of territory," Maha Abdullah, 45, a female teacher from the
Sunni Adhamiyah district said.
Furthermore, Sunnis in Baghdad mistrust the men who
would hold the entrances to their neighborhoods as they keep accusing the
Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces of running death squads that killed
thousands of Sunni civilians.
In the west Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliya, a
series of smaller concrete barriers was supposed to separate Shiite militiamen
in the north from Sunni insurgents in the south. But the access points were
manned by members of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces.
"They (checkpoints guards) allowed militiamen to pass
through (the checkpoints) to attack Sunnis, and then flee north again," Ahmad
Usama, 35, a Ghazaliyah resident said.
"Even when the U.S. troops are sometimes surrounding
our neighborhood looking for insurgents, mortar rounds cross above them to hit
houses, so what the use of such walls," he said.
"Checkpoints and walls were mostly useful as a way to
slow the attacks of Sunni gunmen and guarantee Shiite militiamen a safe exit,"
he added.
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