The Baghdad Wall

[ysengrin]

American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods.

via NY Times (may be behind a pay-wall by the time you see this). Wonder if there will be a push to relocate Sunni into their newly walled ethnic neighborhood.

Comments

[arbeywolf.livejournal.com]

well then maybe David Hasselhoff can do a concert there when they tear it down ;)

[silverfoxwolf.livejournal.com]

Now where have I seen this before? History doesn't make for easy learning it seems.

A not so familiar quote to run by...

[wind-runner.livejournal.com]

"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history" George Bernard Shaw

Because, y'know, segregation was always the solution to life's problems. Couldn't possibly be that THEY are the problem... oh, no, we are giving (read: forcing our) solutions to your problems. It's your fault if they don't work like we say they should...

Did you know they are even thinking of building a security 'fence'/wall between the US and Canada? The world's longest undefended border, a totally friendly neighbour to the North - ya, I can see why we scare them. (eyeroll)

[silvermane3.livejournal.com]

IVE GOT IT!!!! We cna build a wall the length of the Atlantic so the terroritst from Iraq don't follow us home...BRILLANT!

Um I recall walls don't really work historically for a few examples:

Great Wall: Overrun by Mongolians
Berlin Wall: tunneled under, eventually torn down, flown over too
My Backyard Fence: Crawled under, dug under, and even jumped over

Barriers exist for life to overcome them, walls just make it more interesting to overcome.

[silvermane3.livejournal.com]

Ooo another one: Wall Street: Frequently collapses in on itself :)

[cnipur.livejournal.com]

Despite your objective report on it, what do you think about the wall?

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

I don't believe it will work in the long run - and I seriously doubt it'll work in the short run. "Work" here meaning to quell the sectarian violence as stated in the article.

I don't think that everybody in Baghdad will join hands and sing Kumbaya anytime soon, but setting up facilities to emphasize the differences in culture - and suggesting that the Sunni either need to be isolated or protected - before handing it off to a newly-minted government with a Shiite majority can hardly help the situation. Admittedly, many Sunni boycotting the elections helped lessen their presence in the government, but that's still the way it stands now.

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

Now, if we're talking about have the Sunni taking their walled enclave and setting it up as a separate country that we'll be supporting, we can draw parallels with the Berlin Wall. I don't think that'll help, either, and would just worsen relationships between *all* parties and give the signal that the US thinks Iraq should be broken up into various ethnic states or independent countries. (Which might be a solution - but not a very comfortable one.)

It would also equate the Shiite government with East Germany in the minds of many Americans. I don't think we want to get that idea started, either.

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

Feh. Read that as "having," not "have."

[ysengrin.livejournal.com]

... and other errors of grammar. I plead that I was rushing to go run errands.