Iraq's "Gated Communities" and the Sarafiya Bridge

(X-posted at Moon of Alabama)

Connect these dots:

• The U.S. army is building a large wall to seperate one area in Baghdad from its neighbor areas. This to control everything going in and out from the area and against the wishes of the inhabitants. The effort started on April 10 but was only reported yesterday.
• One of the main arteries between that area and its neighbor areas is a large bridge crossing the Tigris.
• On April 12 said bridge got blown up by a "truck bomb."
• Retired military experts immediately doubted the "truck bomb" story and suspected a professional demolition job.
• When the news about the separate and control wall got out on April 19, the spokesman for the army tried to obfuscate the issue.

Who most likely did blow up the bridge?
Where does the "walling off" idea come from?
How are the chances for this to work?

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

Here is a map showing the sectarian borders and the bridge.

More after the jump.

This map is cropped from the BBC's Mapping the violence and shows current sectarian areas. I marked the bridge location with a red circle.

Yesterday the military newspaper Stars & Stripes reported about ongoing U.S. efforts to separate Baghdad neighborhoods:

U.S. soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division in a Baghdad district are "building a three-mile protective wall on the dividing line between a Sunni enclave and the surrounding Shiite neighborhood," according to a U.S. military press release issued Wednesday.

Troops with the 407th Brigade Support Battalion began constructing the wall on April 10 and will continue work "almost nightly until the wall is complete," the release read.
[...]
"That community [in Adhamiyah] will be completely gated and protected," Lt. Col. Thomas Rogers, 407th Brigade Support Battalion, was quoted as saying in the release. "It’s really for the security of all the people of Adhamiyah, not just one side or the other."

The spokesman for the forces in Baghdad is playing dumb:

But after a regularly scheduled news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, said he was unaware of efforts to build a wall dividing Shiite and Sunni enclaves in Baghdad and said that such a tactic was not a policy of the Baghdad security plan.

"We have no intent to build gated communities in Baghdad," Caldwell said Wednesday.

Today the LA Times confirms the Stars & Stripes story and adds some local voices:

Shiite and Sunni Arabs living in the shadow of the barrier were united in their contempt for the imposing new structure.

"Are they trying to divide us into different sectarian cantons?" said a Sunni drugstore owner in Adhamiya, who would identify himself only as Abu Ahmed, 44. "This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation."

After the Sarafiya bridge came down, retired Colonel Patrick Lang posted:

The story that a truck bomb knocked that great big bridge down lacks credibility for me.  I know how to knock down bridges and an un-tamped surface blast is unlikely to do it on a bridge that size.  The idea seems to be to separate Shia pockets in the city preventing them from building a Shia "cordon" across the town.

Former CIA spook and terrorism expert Larry C Johnson wrote:

[T]he visual evidence does not support the claim that this was a suicide bomb.  A blast at one end of the bridge might cause a collapse at that point but not at the opposite end.  The picture does not support the story.

A more likely explanation is that someone wired the bridge with explosives.

Even though the Army spokesman denies such, there is obviously a serious effort to create a Baghdad of "gated communities." We may never learn how the bridge was blown up and who did it. But the fact that it did is, intended or not, supporting the new U.S. tactic.

So far the U.S. media have been silent about the extend of the "walling" effort. In the British  Independent Robert Fisk had a longer recommendable piece on this:

US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

A good question was raised by a local in the LA Times report linked above:

"Are we in the West Bank?" asked Abu Qusay, 48, a pharmacist who said that he wouldn't be able to get to his favorite kebab restaurant in Adhamiya.

The geographical answer is "No," but the idea is certainly not far fetched. Indeed there is one direct connection. Fisk:

The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course - American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers - participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.

Fisk also explains why this will fail:

[I]nsurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be "gated" and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be "enclosed" with everyone else.

Additionally the mostly sectarian primary loyality of Iraqi troops and police will sabotage the effort. Poor mens' artillery will make it a certain failure. Walling off areas with 20 foot high concrete barriers does not prevent mortars flying over such walls and it does not prevent civil war within these areas.

It does hinder commerce and any effort of reconsiliation though.

But maybe that is the real attempt.  

(X-posted at Moon of Alabama)

•  Recommended. This should be the story of the day.

  The most troubling aspect of this story is that, according to today's New York Times, the residents of Adhamiyah don't want the wall.  As Sunnis, they feel as though they're being ghettoized by the Shi'a government with the help of the Americans.  One Adhamiya resident described them as being caged animals.  

  This is not winning hearts and minds.  This is simply trying to put people in cages long enough for George W. Bush to make a "graceful" exit.  But once we leave, and the walls come down, the violence will be even greater.  This is not how you deal with insurgencies.  

  by The Angry Rakkasan on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 12:03:08 AM PDT

  •  They might not want that wall but

    they sure did want that bridge. I remember hearing a report at the time that Iraqis were less upset about the suicide bomber in the Green Zone that attacked the parliment than the loss of that bridge.
    I tried to find the transcript and I couldn't. I did find a picture of the downed bridge on Booman Tribune while looking. That would be one BIG truck bomb.

    by joynow on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 03:25:06 AM PDT

•  They've thrown in the towel

  ...on a united democratic Iraq, and the security wall may demonstrate the dawning of reality for the administration?  But probably not.  In any case, Baghdad is full of security checks and abandoned buildings that act as forts for thousands of Americans--that's the siege.  But the whole thing is looking more and more like Algeria did, with numerous zones, walls, and checkpoints and local and foreign leadership hidden away and out of touch.

  I'm glad that you posted this.  It was reported on the Alertnet wires yesterday, but the greater media ignored it.

  by Nihilvor on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 12:15:00 AM PDT

  •  Read "siege" as "surge;" it's all a siege. nt

    by Nihilvor on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 12:17:44 AM PDT

    •  Divide, conquer, then pump that oil out pronto nt

      by Theghostofkarlafayetucker on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 12:31:47 AM PDT

  •  There was NEVER a plan for democracy in Iraq

    That was their cover story for their invasion and their occupation.  Now that they can't pretend any longer, they switch to the "security through separation" routine.  This is all bullshit spin, lipstick on a pig.

    Their goal has always been to fracture the country into more easily passified cantons to allow enough cover for their extraction of Iraq's oil.  

    end of story.

    by Orwell1984 on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 01:50:35 AM PDT

•  super diary topic. rec'd. n/t

  by MarketTrustee on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 03:48:17 AM PDT

  •  Agree.

    This is a great one.

    One question for Bernhard: according to the map, the bridge connected the Sunni Adhamiyah neighborhood with a Shiite neighborhood.  I hadn't noticed that before but you're correct: that makes the bridge's destruction extremely coincidental, as it occured at the same time as the Americans building a wall around Adhamiyah.

    But I am left to wonder, then, why Colonel Patrick Lang, as you quote, says that the bridge connected two Shiite areas:

    Colonel Patrick Lang posted:

    The story that a truck bomb knocked that great big bridge down lacks credibility for me.  I know how to knock down bridges and an un-tamped surface blast is unlikely to do it on a bridge that size.  The idea seems to be to separate Shia pockets in the city preventing them from building a Shia "cordon" across the town.

    That seems incorrect.  The bridge connected a Shiite area to a Sunni area; not two Shiite areas.  Does Lang just have his facts wrong, here?

    by LithiumCola on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 06:11:12 AM PDT

•  I'm not seeing the map

  Is it just me, or is it something you can fix?

  by AdamR on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 03:56:25 AM PDT

  •  nevermind

    I didn't realize that the map was behind a link up above the jump.

    by AdamR on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 03:57:33 AM PDT

•  my diary The Mourning of a Bridge

  has many of the feelings of the locals recorded. The bridge, to some, was a worse loss than when the Golden Mosque was bombed. It not only causes hardship by making the citizens trek farther, it has ruined the memorys of better times. In a time where any form of stability is precious, the destruction of the bridge is yet another symbol of what we have done to Iraq, blown it to hell. The Mourning of a Bridge

  by OneCrankyDom on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 04:03:31 AM PDT

•  We are taking hostages

  Bush wants the oil money signed into law. The Iraqi oil bill gives 80% of the oil to American companies. I am sure the behind-the-scenes messages to Iraqi lawmakers are along the lines of, "You think we have already done all the damage we can do? Think again."  The Iraqi legislature and insurgency is holding off and trying to run out the clock to preserve their country's future but we are trying hard to show them they have no future if they don't hand over the money.

  by ineedalife on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 04:30:11 AM PDT

•  The Baghdad Ghetto

  This is really a bad sign.

  What is the nature of the wall, exactly?  Does it merely separate Sunnis and Shi'as at points of high tension, or does it cage Sunnis in -- in a detention-type scenario?

  If it is the latter, things have just gone from very bad to very worse in Baghdad.

  by bink on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 05:13:00 AM PDT

  •  The LATimes story

    says this:

    BAGHDAD — A U.S. military brigade is constructing a 3-mile-long concrete wall to cut off one of the capital's most restive Sunni Arab districts from the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that surround it, raising concern about the further Balkanization of Iraq's most populous and violent city.

    That sure makes it sound as though the wall surrounds Adhamiyah.  Looking at the map, it's hard to tell if the wall is going to be meant to surround the entire neighborhood or merely mostly surround it.

    But I think the diarist makes an excellent point: the destruction of the bridge is a wild coincidence, given that destroying the bridge serves exactly the same end as building the wall, and they occured at the same time.

    I suppose we can wonder: couldn't the Americans just have built a wall or check-point barrier at the bridge, too?  However, that may have been unfeasable as it would have angered about a bajillion Baghdadis, I imagine, and it would have been the world's easiest target.

    Obviously, I'm merely speculating along with the diarist, here.

    by LithiumCola on Sat Apr 21, 2007 at 06:18:46 AM PDT