Doomed To Repeat

from Stars & Stripes

Under cover of night, Baghdad wall is built


By Monte Morin, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Mike Pryor / Courtesy of U.S. Army From left, Iraqi police commander Lt. Col. Ahmed Abdullah, an interpreter, and 1st Sgt. Phong Tran, of the 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, survey a section of the wall in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district. Sean Ransford / Courtesy of U.S. Army A contractor helps emplace 12-foot-high concrete barriers along a road in Adhamiyah, Baghdad.

Construction of a controversial, three-mile blast wall in one of Baghdad’s most troubled neighborhoods was completed recently, following three months of grueling labor and heated protests from Iraqi residents and government officials.

The barrier, which consists of thousands of 12-foot-high concrete slabs, or T-walls, rings much of Adhamiyah — an island of Sunni families in Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite east side.

Engineers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team lowered the final 7-ton slab into place in the early morning darkness of May 28, according to a U.S. military statement issued Tuesday.

U.S. commanders say the barrier will make Adhamiyah a safer neighborhood by restricting incoming and outgoing vehicle traffic to several guarded checkpoints. The project is part of an overall attempt by U.S. forces to quell sectarian violence in the embattled capital.

The plan triggered harsh criticism from both Sunnis and Shiites, who saw darker motives in the wall’s construction. While some compared it to Israel’s West Bank security wall, others insisted the project was part of a larger plan to divide the city into a maze of “gated communities.”

U.S. commanders insisted that this was not the case and that the wall was a temporary security measure.

Troops worked at night to build the wall, enduring attacks from insurgents and hauling concrete barriers and work equipment down roads heavily mined by roadside bombs. In one incident, the brigade’s comamnder, Col. Billy Don Farris, was shot and wounded by a sniper while inspecting the wall.

“We’re exhausted,” Lt. Eric Brumfield, a platoon leader with the 2nd BCT’s 407th Support Battalion, was quoted as saying in the release. “We’re tired of seeing that wall every night. But in the end, we did it. We were able to fight through the [roadside bombs] and the publicity and everything else and got it done.”

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