Latest US solution to Iraq's civil war: a three-mile wall

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian

The
US military is building a three-mile concrete wall in the centre of
Baghdad along the most murderous faultline between Sunni and Shia
Muslims.

The wall, which recognises the reality of the hardening
sectarian divide in Baghdad, is a central part of George Bush's final
push to pacify the capital. Work began on April 10 under cover of
darkness and is due for completion by the end of the month.

The
highly symbolic wall has evoked comparisons to the barriers dividing
Protestants and Catholics in Belfast and Israelis and Palestinians
along the length of the West Bank.

Captain
Scott McLearn, who is based at Camp Victory, the US base on the
outskirts of Baghdad, said Shias "are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and
Sunnis are retaliating across the street".

Although Baghdad is
full of barriers and checkpoints, particularly round the Green Zone
where the US and British are based along with the Iraq government, this
is the first time a wall has been built along sectarian lines.

Its
construction comes as the security situation appears to be
deteriorating despite the recent US troop "surge". This week a bombing
at the Sadriya market in the city killed 140 people - the deadliest in
the capital since the 2003 invasion.

Walls are controversial. The
Israeli government insists its wall is effective in reducing suicide
bombers but Palestinians, many of whose lives it has seriously
disrupted, as well as some Israelis argue that it consolidates
divisions.

The Baghdad wall, which will be 12ft (3,5 metres)
high, is being built by US paratroopers who left Camp Taji, about 20
miles north of the city, on the first night in a dozen trucks carrying
stacks of huge concrete barriers, each weighing 14,000 pounds
(6,300kg). Cranes, protected by tanks, winched them into place.
Building has continued every night since.

News of the wall's
construction came as the Democratic US Senate leader, Harry Reid,
provoked a new row with the White House when he claimed the defence
secretary, Robert Gates, and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice,
know that "this war is lost". Mr Gates, on a visit to Baghdad
yesterday, said: "On the war is lost, I respectfully disagree."

The
White House repeated that the new strategy, which involves sending more
US troops to Baghdad, is showing tentative signs of working.