Gas Lines, Garbage, and Closed Banks
Karl, Jonathan
Gas Lines, Garbage, and Closed Banks Daily life in a Sunni neighborhood. by Jonathan Karl Baghdad To get an idea of the problems facing American commanders in Iraq, consider the case of the...
...troops moved back into Doura and once again chased the extremists away...
...The local government, they say, is trying to "soften" the Sunni neighborhoods, so Shia militias can move in and force out Sunni residents...
...All the work was done quietly through Iraqi intermediaries so it would not look like an American project and become a target for insurgents...
...The soldiers tell me the Xs are painted by the Mahdi Army to send a message: Leave your home or be killed...
...Money was spent to install surveillance cameras and teller windows...
...The bank, which has been closed since shortly after Saddam's fall, isn't much more than a storefront on a street lined with small retail businesses, but residents desperately want it reopened...
...You see it in the trash strewn everywhere in once upscale Sunni neighborhoods...
...Whether it is government malfeasance or incompetence, the result is the same...
...I visited Doura's market district...
...That was August...
...But the Mahdi Army, enabled by the Iraqi government, is more organized, methodical even, as it works to sweep the Sunnis out of Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods...
...Dead bodies piled up too—many of them with holes drilled in their heads...
...It was a warm, comfortable, middle class home...
...The ruins of a mosque could be seen from the man's back porch...
...Driving through a section of Amiriyah that borders a Shia neighborhood, I noticed block after block of abandoned homes...
...The soldiers were responding to reports that abandoned homes were being used by insurgents to store weapons...
...Next door the soldiers found one of the few families in the area who have not left...
...Fuel lines are much shorter in the Shia neighborhoods, but access to those stations is frequently blocked by Shia militia thugs who stand in front of the stations and, mafia-like, decide who gets fuel and who doesn't...
...You see it in lines that go on for blocks at fuel stations...
...There's a long, long way to go...
...Military officials with responsibility for Amiriyah say the claim is bogus...
...And here is where the story takes an all-too-familiar turn...
...It's been abandoned for three months...
...Many of these houses had big Xs spraypainted on them...
...But many Shiites have been forced out as well...
...That bank is secure because these people have a vested interest in Jonathan Karl is senior national security correspondent for ABC News...
...He watches as his neighborhood turns into a trash-strewn ghost town...
...There were carpets on the floor, ornate furniture, portraits of religious leaders on the wall, bookcases filled with books...
...There has been so much fighting, people have just left...
...Several U.S...
...The insurgents were either killed or chased away, the trash bulldozed, and sure enough, the markets reopened and a sense of normalcy returned...
...Colonel J.B...
...It's the Mahdi Army's answer to the American strategy of "clear, hold, and build...
...The trash is everywhere and most of the stores shuttered, but a few families are walking the streets and a few stores are reopening...
...The military suspects the bank was shuttered for another reason: It was injecting economic vibrancy into a Sunni neighborhood that had been slowly dying...
...As soldiers kicked open one door, I followed them inside...
...In September, as soon as U.S...
...Burton, who has responsibility for Amiriyah, snapped into action...
...The plan was to kill the bad guys, clean up the streets, and give Iraqis a chance to take their neighborhoods back...
...troops back in force, it is beginning to show signs of life again...
...After three weeks of brisk activity, the bank was no longer doing business, a victim not of insurgent bombs, but of the Iraqi government...
...Elsewhere, Sunni extremists are waging their own campaign of sectarian terror, sending thousands of Shiites fleeing their homes to refugee camps on the outskirts of Baghdad...
...keeping it secure," says Major Brynt Parmeter...
...General George Casey visited Amiriyah in mid-December, heard those demands, and ordered his top subordinates to make reopening the bank a priority...
...In the Sunni Doura neighborhood, the military scored its first success...
...It's a Shiite mosque, the man said...
...A middle-aged man stood at the door with a little boy of about four clinging to his leg, and his wife and daughter meekly behind them...
...I walked through the ruins of the Hurriya neighborhood with a squad of soldiers from the Army's 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division...
...This kind of story is told and retold every day in Baghdad...
...Once homes are cleared of Sunnis, the Mahdi Army turns to its real-estate wing, which moves Shi-ites from those refugee camps into the homes recently abandoned by Sunnis who have either been terrorized or murdered...
...The residents had simply vanished...
...Since about Christmas, there has been a 24/7 U.S...
...By late December, the bank was open again...
...The finance ministry, which is controlled by the Shia SCIRI party, ordered the bank closed...
...Hurriya was a mixed neighborhood...
...With U.S...
...They have the people to drive them, but the trash isn't picked up...
...Concrete barriers were put out front as protection from car bombs...
...We could open it tomorrow...
...This is a good neighborhood," the man told the soldiers through an interpreter...
...military officers I spoke to in Baghdad are convinced that the squeezing of Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods is a deliberate operation carried out primarily by Baghdad's unelected Shia provincial government...
...military presence here...
...The Shia-dom-inated federal and local governments are systematically denying resources to Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods...
...Sanitation trucks don't come anymore...
...He asks the American soldiers in for a cup of chai, knowing they offer the best chance of saving what's left of his neighborhood, and his way of life...
...The military plans to wall off the area, limiting access through a few security checkpoints that, theoretically, will be manned by Iraqi forces...
...In late December, U.S...
...by Jonathan Karl Baghdad To get an idea of the problems facing American commanders in Iraq, consider the case of the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood...
...The Sunni management of the bank hired local guards...
...The Sunni areas don't get much gas or kerosene...
...Over the past three months, this has been perhaps Baghdad's deadliest neighborhood...
...Picking up trash was part of the mission when the military launched Operation Together Forward back in August...
...troops left, the trash began to pile up again...
...Now almost all of the Sun-nis are gone...
...This man wants to protect his family, but refuses to leave his home...
...They have the trucks," says Major Parmeter...
...The first thing that hits you in these neighborhoods is the stench of garbage...
...It's not secure, ministry officials explained, and therefore must be shut down...
Vol. 12 • January 2007 • No. 19
