BERLIN-TYPE WALL DIVIDES BAGHDAD IN HALF. RESIDENTS SAY THEY FEEL LIKE THEY ARE IN PRISON

The mainstream media in the United States has once again failed to explain fully why there is relative peace and quiet in Baghdad.

Huge concrete walls have been erected walling off parts Baghdad much like the Berlin Wall divided Berlin.

The United States military quietly constructed the Berlin-type wall as a means of holding down violence in Baghdad.

The residents of Baghdad are not happy with the walls and are now making their feelings known.


Baghdad's walls keep peace but feel like prison

By HAMZA HENDAWIAssociated Press Writer
http://www.thestate.com/372/story/445389.html

Baghdad hasn't been this quiet in years. But the respite from bloodshed comes at a high price.
Up to 20 feet high in some sections.

Rows after rows of barrier walls divide the city into smaller and smaller areas that protect people from bombings, sniper fire and kidnappings. They also lead to gridlock, rising prices for food and homes, and complaints about living in what feels like a prison.

Baghdad's walls are everywhere. They have turned a riverside capital of leafy neighborhoods and palm-lined boulevards into a city of shadows that separate Sunnis from Shiites.

The walls block access to schools, mosques, churches, hotels, homes, markets and even entire neighborhoods - almost anything that could be attacked. For many Iraqis, they have become the iconic symbol of the war.

"Maybe one day they will remove it," said Kareem Mustapha, a 26-year-old Sadr City resident who lives a five-minute walk from a wall built this spring in the large Shiite district.
"I don't know when, but it is not soon."

Indeed, new walls are still going up, the latest one around the northwestern Shiite neighborhood of Hurriyah, where thousands of Sunnis were slaughtered or expelled in 2006. They could well be around for years to come, enforcing the capital's fragile peace and enshrining its sectarian divisions.

Some walls are colorful, painted by young local artists with scenes depicting green pastures or the pomp and glory of Iraq's ancient civilizations.

Others are commercial, plastered with fliers advertising everything from the local kebab joint to seaside vacations in Iran or university degrees in Ukraine.

Still others are religious or political, with posters of popular clerics or graffiti hostile to the United States, Israel or - most recently - Iraq's prime minister.

Most are just bleak and gray, a reminder that danger lurks on the other side.