U.S. Army Capt. John Dixon, who is responsible for Adil, said, "About 70% of the violence here has the displacement issue at its core. It is the single biggest issue I deal with."
Since October, American military officials and neighborhood council leaders have learned of cases in which Iraqi army personnel threatened Sunni residents with detention to clear the way for Shiite families. They are investigating many more.
The neighborhood council chairman in Adil, Abu Hamsa, said he had repeatedly complained to commanders of the Iraqi army, which is largely Shiite.
"I told the officers that they were threatening the families, and the officer said it was individual, unauthorized behavior," Abu Hamsa said. "In these cases, the soldiers on the street seem to be more powerful than the commanders telling them not intervene."
Col. Chesney said he was deeply worried about the problem. "Worst-case scenario is that they eventually clear Sunnis out of Baghdad," he said.
Violence everywhere
In December 2006, months into the sectarian violence unleashed by the February bombing of the Shiite Golden Mosque in Samarra, Halki's father was killed by members of the Mahdi Army militia, Halki told people he met in Adil.
By the time Halki arrived, the neighborhood had become a collection of faded remnants with exteriors stained brown from the dust, chipped marble staircases and rooms crammed with poverty-stricken families sleeping on floors.
In December 2007, Iraqi soldiers and a Shiite man came calling.
Although the man had no ownership papers for the two-story house with a large courtyard garden, Halki was told that he had just two days to leave, according to U.S. military personnel who informally investigated the case and to neighbors Abd Mahmood, 25, and Yaseen Mahmood, 24.
The Mahmoods, who also were squatting, said Halki was deeply worried and asked them to hide his identification documents. "He was afraid. He started to gather his things. He was wondering where he would go," Yaseen Mahmood said.
Halki left the house to the new Shiite occupant but approached soldiers at a U.S. military outpost at an abandoned mall, where he was told to go the neighborhood council, Dixon said. He never did, council chairman Abu Hamsa said.
Instead, Halki, who had joined a so-called concerned local citizens security force formed by the U.S. military, returned to the house with two other off-duty officers. They all had their guns, including a Glock pistol, Dixon said.
"Given what happened to his father, what do you expect, that he go out and sell flowers?" said Ali Jabo, a supervisor in the group, recently renamed Sons of Iraq, adding that what Halki did was wrong.
The new Shiite occupant allegedly wrested Halki's gun away and shot him in the head. The Shiite man was shot in the side and hospitalized.
Two days later, a grenade went off at the doorstep of a nearby Shiite family who had lived there for three decades, an act interpreted as possible retribution by Sunnis.
The same day, the house once occupied by Halki was set ablaze, leaving the entire home in ashen blisters. "The message [to outsiders] was: Don't try to come back here," Dixon said.
garrett.therolf@latimes.com
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Times staff writer Usama Redha contributed to this report.
