Americans in Iraq reviving 4,500-year-old idea: build a wall around trouble
American forces, struggling to improve security in Baghdad, are turning to an approach with a 4,500-year history in the region: They are building a three-mile wall around the heavily Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya.
A news release said the project, which soldiers jokingly called “the Great Wall of Adhamiya,” was “one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”
By limiting entry points to the neighborhood, and then setting up checkpoints at those points, the plan is to let “residents and people with legitimate business in, while keeping death squads and militia groups out.”
In the district, “any semblance of normal life vanished more than a year ago,” The Times’s Alissa Rubin wrote on April 26.
Read entire article at New York Times 'The Lede' blog
A news release said the project, which soldiers jokingly called “the Great Wall of Adhamiya,” was “one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence.”
By limiting entry points to the neighborhood, and then setting up checkpoints at those points, the plan is to let “residents and people with legitimate business in, while keeping death squads and militia groups out.”
In the district, “any semblance of normal life vanished more than a year ago,” The Times’s Alissa Rubin wrote on April 26.