Walls coming down, but mistrust lingers BAGHDAD – Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of U.S. troops to stop neighbors from killing one another. A crane worker stood on top of a blast wall at the border between the Sunni and Shiite parts of a Baghdad neighborhood last month. “They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,” said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. “Now it is safe.” The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change in the Iraqi capital. The U.S. surge strategy, which increased the number of U.S....
[read full story]
Your Web Site
