The 407th Brigade Support Battalion broke ground on the wall on April 10 and will continue working on it "almost nightly until the wall is complete," according to Capt. Scott McLearn.
“The area the wall will protect is the largest predominately Sunni neighborhood in East Baghdad. Majority-Shiite neighborhoods surround it on three sides. Like other religiously divided regions in the city, the area has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation,” the military's press release states.
"Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street," McLearn reports.
It's unclear when this became a "centerpiece" of US strategy, since just Wednesday, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for coalition forces in Iraq, said at a press briefing that 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 on Wednesday.
“Our goal is to unify Baghdad, not subdivide it into separate .”
Today, however, Reuters cited military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver explaining, "It is not the stated goal of the Baghdad security plan to divide everything up into these ... small gated communities."
He said this was not "completely incongruous" with the wall at Adhamiya because local commanders could conduct operations appropriate to conditions on the ground.
L.A. Times coverage cites local residents not at all pleased with the development, "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."
Some of Ahmed's customers come from Shiite or mixed neighborhoods that are now cut off by large barriers along a main highway. Customers and others seeking to cross into the Sunni district must park their cars outside Adhamiya, walk through a narrow passage in the wall and take taxis on the other side.
Another local the LA Times spoke to, Najim Sadoon, 51, was worried that he would lose customers at his housewares store. "This closure of the street will have severe economic hardships," he said. "Transportation fees will increase. Customers who used to come here in their cars will now prefer to go to other places."
Majid Fadhil, 43, a Shiite police commissioner in a neighborhood north of the wall, said flatly, "This fence is not going to work."
