Under siege: what the surge really means in Baghdad

A city divided by high concrete walls, barbed wire and checkpoints; armoured columns moving through deserted evening streets lit by the glow of searchlights and emptied by official curfew and fear. This is Baghdad, seven months into the surge, and George Bush's last throw of the dice in Iraq.

On the surface, the Iraqi capital is less overtly violent than it used to be. The number of car bombings have fallen to "only" 23 a month from 42 in the same period last year, there are fewer sounds of explosions and gunfire than in the past, and there is, generally, less tension. And some of that must be due to the presence of more troops.

But for many Iraqis, the Americans have turned their land into a prison. The barriers, which have turned Baghdad into a series of ghettos, are meant to keep the bombers out, but they also keep residents penned in. People may feel safer inside their neighbourhoods, but are more wary of venturing outside them. A short journey across the city can take hours with roads blocked off and numerous checkpoints, discouraging people from visiting relations and friends and reinforcing the sense of isolation.

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The intense security around the conference created a gridlock in Baghdad with people striving to do their daily shopping before the evening curfew. Coming out of a store in the Karada district, Mariam al-Nasari viewed the situation with despair. "Nothing has been achieved," she said. "Why are they having foreign leaders here in their big cars when they should be doing something for the people of this country. They say things are getting safer, but I do not think so. You have a few days of little happening and then a big bomb. There are other problems, schools are shut, we cannot get to the hospitals. I have to go home now, I do not have the time to do all I need to do, we are always being delayed by the walls."

The walls, being put up by American contractors at a record speed, are formalising the break up of Baghdad. The city where Sunni, Shia and Christians once lived in comparative social amity – although not the same access to political power – is now so divided along sectarian lines that it may be impossible ever to reunify it.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2947410.ece