"Riverbend," the young Iraqi woman whose blog Baghdad Burning gave us a glimpse into her first hand, personal, beyond the TV cameras view of Baghdad during its invasion and occupation, is moving out of her home. She and her family will leave Baghdad for a new life elsewhere. She describes her feelings about leaving her home and what that home has become – not only in the past four years of devastation but what it is likely to become in the current and future efforts by outsiders to shape and redefine it. Americans are building walls and carving out Baghdad, a city which used to be integrated along ethnic / sectarian lines, into Shia and Sunni ghettos. Building walls to keep the enemy "in" or "out’ has been an age old exercise in futility by occupiers and invaders, as Riverband points out. It has rarely worked in the past and is unlikely to work in the future. (Her post has been also published in Salon.)
The Great Wall of Segregation……Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It’s a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest ‘Sunni’ area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will ‘protect’ A’adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn’t empty of Sunnis.
The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we’re just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.
The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn’t enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It’s time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".
Accidental Blogger 
6 responses to “Walls of Futility”
I feel for Riverbend but why blame the Americans when Shi’a and Sunni muslims cannot reconcile their own internecine differences? The seeming quiet under Baa’thist secularism – propped up by the West for decades – was paper thin. It did not take long for the veneer to crack and the latent hostility to explode.
The world can see the daily, vicious Shi’a-Sunni, intra-muslim power-at-any-cost struggle going on. Iraq is the theatre of operations but it is the collective ambitions of the Middle East power brokers which should be held culpable. The Middle East is the only region of the world where the populations of shi’a-sunni are roughly equal in number.
The stakes are high with both Iran and Saudi clearly meddling in Iraq and several commentators are predicting that terrorist violence will shortly break out in other parts of the region. Some have cited the recent terror bust in Saudi Arabia, which did not provide details about religious affiliation of the would-be attackers, as a directional indicator. The news is not good for Riverbend – unfortunately things will likely go from bad to worse.
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Sanjay:
Long time, no see – welcome back!
It is funny that you should shift blame to “power brokers” in the middle east for Iraqis not meekly turning the other cheek. Don’t you think that the middle easterners have a more legitimate right to be “meddling” in their own neighborhood than we do (or Israel does) in shaping the destiny of that region? Sometimes nations do meddle in their neighbors’ affairs when things are going up in flames across their borders.
As for Baathist secularism propping up a tenuous peace among warring Sunnis and Shias, tell me, were they slaughtering each other at this rate BEFORE the Baathists took power in Iraq in the 1960s? The western media keep throwing up their hands and spreading the canard that “these people (take your pick where) have been killing each other for centuries based on religious/ sectarian considerations, how can we civilize them in only a few years etc. etc.?” Yet, there is no historical evidence that Shia / Sunni bloodletting had ever been a regular and ongoing event ANYWHERE in the middle east. If anything, Shia, Sunnis, Christians and Jews had lived in relative peace in most places in the middle east, including under the authoritarian Ottoman Empire. Much more so than they did in Christian Europe. Even in India where the ruling Muslim kings were all Sunnis, Shia Muslims flourished as courtiers, advisors and citizens.
Here is an Iraqi view on the walls.
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So you think that the daily spectacle of Iraqis blowing each other to bits is some sort of heroic resistance to american occupation? If so, this would make it the only resistance movement in history, perhaps ever, where people kill each other rather than the enemy! If american troops were/ are being targeted, it is because the Sunnis didn’t want them in Iraq at all in the first place. Now that Sunni power has been destroyed, it is the Shi’as that can’t wait for the U.S. to leave so they can really get on with the job of “not turning the other cheek”
When I used the term meddling, it was really not intended as a signal to start India bashing. I made the observation in a non pejorative manner to indicate that Iraq has become the bone that is drawing extremist sunnis and shi’as of the region.
As for baathist history or the relationship between the religions of the region, I don’t believe history is any indicator. Perhaps for the first time in recent memory, the Shi’as (maybe even the Kurds too) see themselves as being in a position to wrest political power commensurate with their population in the region. I don’t think their power brokers will give up on that opportunity anytime soon.
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Who’s bashing India? I was (and still am) for the action Indira Gandhi’s govt. took in E. Pakistan / Bangladesh in 1971. If ever there was righteous “meddling,” in another nation’s mess, that was one shining example.
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I’m glad to be finally able to agree with you on something :-) India never wanted to possess, or hold political suzerainty over, the former East Pakistan. The goal was to turn over power to a locally elected government. By contrast, the meddling in Iraq seems to be aimed at possessing Iraq or at least winning political ascendancy for one group or the other.
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Sanjay:
Right. There is a huge difference between what India did in E. Pakistan (India’s own security was at stake, terrified refugees were entering India in waves, atrocities of the worst nature were rampant and a true genocide was under way) and the US presence in Iraq. There is no comparison politically, strategically and morally between that scenario and what the US has launched in Iraq. If the US would have interceded in Darfur without any consideration for control or occupation, it would have been a valid comparison with India’s action in Bangladesh.
Sooner or later, you always agree with me – at least on principle, if not on details. :-) You just like to begin the conversation with an argument. I am not complaining. It’s fine with me.
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