Iraq: A Tale of One City, Now Two Beneath Rosey Assessments Bitter Truths

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/12/5178/

Iraq: A Tale of One City, Now Two
Beneath Rosey Assessments Bitter Truths

by Ali al-Fadhily
BAGHDAD - The separation of religious groups in the face of sectarian violence has brought some semblance of relative calm to Baghdad. But many Iraqis see this as the uncertain consequence of a divide and rule policy.

Claims are going the rounds that sectarian violence in Iraq has fallen, and that the U.S. military “surge” has succeeded in reducing attacks against civilians. Baghdad residents speak of the other side of the coin - that they live now in a largely divided city that has brought this uneasy calm.

“I would like to agree with the idea that violence in Iraq has decreased and that everything is fine,” retired general Waleed al-Ubaidy told IPS in Baghdad. “But the truth is far more bitter. All that has happened is a dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq.”

And as with Baquba and other violence-hit areas of Iraq, he says a part of the story in Baghdad is that there is nobody left to tell it. “Most of the honest journalists have left.”

“Baghdad has been torn into two cities and many towns and neighbourhoods,” Ahmad Ali, chief engineer from one of Baghdad’s municipalities told IPS. “There is now the Shia Baghdad and the Sunni Baghdad to start with. Then, each is divided into little town-like pieces of the hundreds of thousands who had to leave their homes.”

Many Baghdad residents say that the claims of reduced violence can be tested only when refugees go back home.

Many areas of Baghdad that were previously mixed are now totally Shia or totally Sunni. This follows the sectarian cleansing in mixed neighbourhoods by militias and death squads.

On the Russafa side of Tigris River, al-Adhamiya is now fully Sunni; the other areas are all Shia. The al-Karkh side of the river is purely Sunni except for Shula, Hurriya and small strips of Aamil which are dominated by Shia militias.

“If the situation is good, why are five million Iraqis living in exile,” says 55- year-old Abu Mohammad who was evicted from Shula in West Baghdad to become a refugee in Amiriya, a few miles from his lost home.

“Americans and Iranians have succeeded in realising their old dream of dividing the Iraqi people into sects. That is the only success they can talk about.”

Violence is no more hitting the headlines, but it clearly continues
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/12/5178/