Military officials defend new barrier in Baghdad
BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi military officials scrambling to deflect criticism of a wall being erected to separate a volatile Sunni Muslim neighborhood from surrounding Shiite areas insisted Monday that the structure is not a wall at all.
It's a barrier.
The distinction comes because it is a temporary structure, they said of the 14,000-pound slabs of concrete placed side by side on the edge of Sunni-dominated Adhamiya, in northeastern Baghdad. When completed, it is expected to be 3 miles long.
The comments were the latest attempt to quiet a controversy that erupted last week after the U.S. military unit building the structure proudly announced its mission and dubbed the project "The Great Wall of Adhamiya." In a press release, it said Adhamiya, which has fallen into severe disrepair as a result of the war, would be like "an exclusive gated community" when the barrier was completed.
Adhamiya residents, though, said the divider would aggravate sectarian tensions and hurt business on both sides by depriving Sunnis of Shiite customers and vice versa. On Monday, hundreds marched through the neighborhood calling for construction to be halted. Some carried banners reading, "No to the sectarian wall."
"We are protesting this vicious wall! This is a mass detention for the people of Adhamiya," said Hazim Ubaydi, 32, who accused Iraq's Shiite-led government of wanting to cage in Sunnis.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite, said Sunday night that he opposed the project and had ordered it halted.
But Iraqi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Qassim Musawi said at a news conference Monday that the project would go on and said Maliki had supported the barrier idea. Opposition arose after exaggerated media reports making the structure sound like the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China or the barrier being built by Israel in and around the West Bank, he said.
"There's a difference between constructing a security barrier and a security wall," said an infuriated Musawi. "Some media said the security forces will construct a security wall. This is inaccurate and groundless. As I said, these will be barriers."
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Semantic debate
The difference between barriers and walls, according to Musawi and a U.S. spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. Mark Fox, is that the concrete slabs can be moved once the security situation improves. They also noted that Baghdad already is rife with barriers, including piles of sandbags, coils of barbed wire and trenches.
