U.S. criticized for building wall around Sunnis
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U.S. criticized for building wall around Sunnis
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Criticism mounted Saturday over a wall U.S. 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.
Violence continued Saturday, with at least three people killed when a bomb left on a bus exploded in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, police said. The minibus was gutted by flames and its windows shattered.
Gunmen stormed a house in Kirkuk, 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, killing a mother, father and their two teenage daughters, police said. The victims were Kurds who had received death threats from al Qaeda-linked militants operating in the area, witnesses said.
A U.S. soldier was also killed Saturday by a roadside bomb southwest of the capital, the military said.
The U.S. military says the wall in the minority Sunni community of Adhamiya 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 U.S. 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 Adhamiya ," 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," al-Dulaimi said in an interview.
Separating Sunnis and Shiites
U.S. and Iraqi forces have long erected cement barriers around marketplaces and coalition bases and outposts in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities such as Ramadi in an effort to prevent attacks, including suicide car bombs. But the Adhamiya project appears to be the biggest effort ever to use a lengthy wall in Baghdad to break contact, and violence, between Sunnis and Shiites.
The U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq now involves persuading Iraqis to live in peace and support their democratically elected government and launching a security plan in the capital that calls for 28,000 additional American troops and thousands of Iraqi soldiers.
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 Adhamiya resident who works at the Interior Ministry.
The U.S. military says it began building the barrier April 10 and hopes to finish it as soon as possible. AP Television News footage from the site on Saturday showed small concrete blocks, piles of dirt and coils of barbed wire on a main street. Eventually, the military said, the wall will be three miles (five kilometers) long and include sections as tall as 12 feet (3.5 meters).
Community leaders said Saturday that construction began before they had approved an American proposal for the wall.
"A few days ago, we met with the U.S. army unit in charge of Adhamiya and it asked us, as a local council, to sign a document to build a wall to reduce killing and attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces," said Dawood al-Azami, the acting head of the Adhamiya council.
"I told the soldiers that I would not sign it unless I could talk to residents first. We told residents at Friday prayers, but our local council hasn't signed onto the project yet, and construction is already under way."
Australian defense minister arrives
In another development, Australian Defense Minister Brendan Nelson arrived in Baghdad Saturday on an unannounced visit, and met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the government said.
Australia, a staunch supporter of the U.S.-led Iraq war, has about 1,400 troops in and around the country.
The U.S. soldier killed Saturday was part of a unit that had dismounted from vehicles and was on a foot patrol when struck by a roadside bomb about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. Two others were wounded, it added.
At least 3,316 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.
Also Saturday, Poland's defense ministry said a Polish soldier was killed and four injured when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb Friday night in Diwaniya, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Baghdad.
Warsaw contributed ground troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003, and has since led an international force south of Baghdad that now includes 900 Poles. Twenty Polish soldiers have been killed in Iraq.
In other violence Saturday, two bullet-riddled dead bodies were discovered in Musayyib, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of Baghdad, police said. One of the bodies was found floating in the Euphrates River, and the other was discovered in a deserted area. Both victims had their hands and legs bound, and showed signs of torture, police said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/21/iraq.wall.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
While I don't pretend to be a military or diplomatic strategist, how in the hell can you call this a solution?
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Criticism mounted Saturday over a wall U.S. 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.
Violence continued Saturday, with at least three people killed when a bomb left on a bus exploded in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, police said. The minibus was gutted by flames and its windows shattered.
Gunmen stormed a house in Kirkuk, 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Baghdad, killing a mother, father and their two teenage daughters, police said. The victims were Kurds who had received death threats from al Qaeda-linked militants operating in the area, witnesses said.
A U.S. soldier was also killed Saturday by a roadside bomb southwest of the capital, the military said.
The U.S. military says the wall in the minority Sunni community of Adhamiya 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 U.S. 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 Adhamiya ," 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," al-Dulaimi said in an interview.
Separating Sunnis and Shiites
U.S. and Iraqi forces have long erected cement barriers around marketplaces and coalition bases and outposts in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities such as Ramadi in an effort to prevent attacks, including suicide car bombs. But the Adhamiya project appears to be the biggest effort ever to use a lengthy wall in Baghdad to break contact, and violence, between Sunnis and Shiites.
The U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq now involves persuading Iraqis to live in peace and support their democratically elected government and launching a security plan in the capital that calls for 28,000 additional American troops and thousands of Iraqi soldiers.
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 Adhamiya resident who works at the Interior Ministry.
The U.S. military says it began building the barrier April 10 and hopes to finish it as soon as possible. AP Television News footage from the site on Saturday showed small concrete blocks, piles of dirt and coils of barbed wire on a main street. Eventually, the military said, the wall will be three miles (five kilometers) long and include sections as tall as 12 feet (3.5 meters).
Community leaders said Saturday that construction began before they had approved an American proposal for the wall.
"A few days ago, we met with the U.S. army unit in charge of Adhamiya and it asked us, as a local council, to sign a document to build a wall to reduce killing and attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces," said Dawood al-Azami, the acting head of the Adhamiya council.
"I told the soldiers that I would not sign it unless I could talk to residents first. We told residents at Friday prayers, but our local council hasn't signed onto the project yet, and construction is already under way."
Australian defense minister arrives
In another development, Australian Defense Minister Brendan Nelson arrived in Baghdad Saturday on an unannounced visit, and met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the government said.
Australia, a staunch supporter of the U.S.-led Iraq war, has about 1,400 troops in and around the country.
The U.S. soldier killed Saturday was part of a unit that had dismounted from vehicles and was on a foot patrol when struck by a roadside bomb about 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. Two others were wounded, it added.
At least 3,316 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.
Also Saturday, Poland's defense ministry said a Polish soldier was killed and four injured when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb Friday night in Diwaniya, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Baghdad.
Warsaw contributed ground troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in 2003, and has since led an international force south of Baghdad that now includes 900 Poles. Twenty Polish soldiers have been killed in Iraq.
In other violence Saturday, two bullet-riddled dead bodies were discovered in Musayyib, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of Baghdad, police said. One of the bodies was found floating in the Euphrates River, and the other was discovered in a deserted area. Both victims had their hands and legs bound, and showed signs of torture, police said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/21/iraq.wall.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
While I don't pretend to be a military or diplomatic strategist, how in the hell can you call this a solution?
My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
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Iraq PM asks for halt to Baghdad wall
By Dean Yates and Ibon Villelabeitia
Iraq's prime minister said on Sunday he had urged the U.S. military to halt work on a wall separating a Baghdad Sunni enclave from nearby Shi'ite areas after sharp criticism from some residents.
The cement wall around the district of Adhamiya is part of a new U.S. military tactic to protect flashpoint neighborhoods with barriers, in a security crackdown in the capital that is seen as a final attempt to halt civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.
Car bombs killed 18 people in Baghdad on Sunday and gunmen shot dead 23 workers from an ancient minority sect after pulling them off a minibus in the northern city of Mosul in an apparent revenge attack.
Speaking in Cairo at the start of an Arab tour to drum up support for Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist, said he objected to the 5-km (3-mile) wall, which residents said would isolate them from other communities and sharpen sectarian tensions.
"I asked yesterday that it be stopped and that alternatives be found to protect the area," Maliki said in his first public comments on the issue.
"I said that I fear this wall might have repercussions which remind us of other walls, which we reject," he added.
Some Adhamiya residents have compared the wall to barriers erected by Israel in the occupied West Bank.
The U.S. military sought on Sunday to play down any hint of friction between Maliki and American commanders behind the Baghdad plan, saying it would coordinate with the Iraqi government and Iraqi commanders on how best to establish security measures.
"The government of Iraq and MNF-I (Multinational Force-Iraq) do agree that we need to protect the people of Iraq. How that is done is always being discussed and we will continue that dialogue," the military said in a statement.
Among Sunday's attacks in Baghdad, two suicide car bombers rammed their vehicles into a police station in a mostly Shi'ite neighborhood, killing 12 people and wounding 95, police said.
It was one of the deadliest bombings aimed at Iraq's security forces since the crackdown was launched two months ago.
"Look at the situation Iraqis are living in. You see blasts whenever you try to go out to earn a living," said one witness.
ANCIENT SECT
In Mosul, gunmen killed 23 textile workers from the minority Yazidi sect after forcing them out of a minibus.
Brigadier-General Mohammed al-Waggaa said the gunmen stopped the vehicle and gunned down the workers.
Waggaa said the mass killing appeared to be in retaliation for an incident in which a Yazidi woman was stoned to death several weeks ago for converting to Islam. Another police source who declined to be named confirmed the incident.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have poured thousands of extra troops into Baghdad over the past two months.
While the boost in troop levels has reduced killings by sectarian death squads, car bomb attacks still plague the city. A wave of car bombs killed nearly 200 people last Wednesday.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Iraq's leaders on Friday that progress in reconciling warring Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs would be an "important element" when Washington decides this summer whether to maintain the higher troop numbers.
But remarks by senior U.S. commanders and officials and a change in Army deployment plans suggest the higher level of American troops will likely remain for months beyond the summer.
Washington has avoided saying how long it will keep the beefed-up force of about 160,000 troops ordered in January.
It has said only that it will review progress in the late summer. The implication is that troops could then start to be withdrawn but that appears improbable.
The U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said during Gates' visit that the buildup of some 28,000 extra U.S. troops would not even be complete for another two months.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070422/ts_nm/iraq_dc_6
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln