U.S. wall seen worsening division of Baghdad

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A U.S. military project to wall off a mainly Sunni Arab enclave in Baghdad evokes images of Israel's West Bank barrier for many Iraqis who believe the plan will widen sectarian rifts tearing their capital asunder.

Physically sealing Adhamiya and other troubled areas may have a fleeting impact on the level of bloodshed, analysts said. But it will further fray the social fabric of a city that has ripped very roughly into a Shi'ite east and Sunni west.

"All of this is trying to find solutions to violence short of what is actually required, which is to find a political compromise between all the groups," said Joost Hiltermann, a senior International Crisis Group analyst in Amman.

"I know the Americans are trying to suppress violence in order to bring people to the table, but I see no real effort to bring people to the table."

U.S. soldiers began erecting the 5-km (3-mile) barrier of 3.5-metre (12-foot) high concrete blocks around Adhamiya, hemmed in on three sides by Shi'ite districts, on April 10. Their plan is to create at least five "gated communities" in Baghdad.

Local protests and a political outcry prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday to order the scheme halted, but U.S. officials have defended it and its fate is unclear.

"I said that I fear this wall might have repercussions which remind us of other walls, which we reject," Maliki said.

Sunni Arabs in particular find a sinister parallel with Israel's network of walls, fences and checkpoints in the West Bank. These help protect Israelis from suicide bombers, but also slice up Palestinian land and severely disrupt movement.

"Whether the Americans like it or not, Iraqis think that what they are doing in Iraq is what the Israelis are doing in the West Bank," said Dubai-based security analyst Mustafa Alani.

"The Americans say the barriers are moveable and temporary, but they will establish a sort of de facto separation within the capital, with an impact on the whole country."

POLITICAL BACKLASH

U.S. officials say the aim is to protect neighborhoods under a security drive regarded as Washington's final bid to avert all-out war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

"The intention is not to segregate communities," the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, said on Monday. "In some areas where there are clear faultlines it seems to us that a line of barriers makes good security sense."

The U.S. military may reckon the walls will help it get more of a grip on rebels within neighborhoods like Adhamiya, as well as keeping out vengeful car bombers and gunmen from elsewhere.

"The Americans have no clear strategy in Iraq," said Sunni politician Hussein al-Falluji. "Now they are trying to find a temporary solution even if it is at the expense of the Iraqis."

Some Shi'ite leaders were just as hostile.

"After the occupation forces failed to build psychological barriers among the Iraqi people, they start to put up real barriers," declared Nassar al-Rubaie, head of the parliamentary bloc loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Work on the Adhamiya barrier began well after the start in mid-February of the latest U.S. security plan, which also involves a "surge" of around 30,000 extra American troops.

Too little, too late, said London-based defense analyst Paul Beaver. "If you don't have sufficient troops, you have to take strange measures. And the Americans don't have sufficient troops. The Iraqi army and police are ineffective."

STILL VULNERABLE

Walls may obstruct car bombers, but civilians in protected areas will remain exposed to the threat of mortar fire or individual suicide attackers.

Sunni Arabs in Baghdad, proud of their heritage and their capital's ancient glory, are quick to suspect ill intent from the Americans and from Maliki's Shi'ite-dominated government.

"Many of them always saw themselves as Iraqis first and then as Sunnis, but secular," said Hiltermann. "To cast them now as Sunnis and confine them to a neighborhood is the ultimate insult. They see it as Shi'ites trying to exclude them."

One Sunni woman in Adhamiya, who would not give her name, said the wall was not needed. "They want to strangle us and create sectarian strife among this Muslim population," she said.

Such conflict is already a grim Iraqi reality. It was partly provoked by al Qaeda-linked Sunni Islamist insurgents whose attacks on Shi'ites now often draw swift militia retaliation.

"This Iraqi government is not capable, and probably not willing, to effect the kind of reconciliation that would bring about a new national compact," Hiltermann said.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim and Aseel Kami in Baghdad)