Iraqi opinion hardened on Wednesday against a US plan to wall in a Baghdad district, with more street protests and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki making clear his opposition to the project.
Maliki is on a tour of Iraq's Arab neighbours, and in his absence Iraqi and US commanders have defended the building of a three-mile (five-kilometre) barrier around the east Baghdad Sunni enclave of Adhamiyah.
But the Shia prime minister has now made his opposition crystal clear. "We said before coming here that it must stop and other measures be taken to protect people living in Adhamiyah. We will go back to Baghdad and follow up the issue, God willing," he said in Kuwait, before flying on to Oman.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish politician, also expressed reservations, issuing a statement that said: "I do not agree with such barriers. I don't believe this is something good. We can set up less harsh barriers."
US and Iraqi forces are engaged in a large-scale operation to erect security barriers between many areas of Baghdad, and insist this is simply a short-term measure to protect residents from bombers and death squads.
But last week, when the US military revealed a plan to surround a Sunni district with a barricade, anger erupted among Baghdadis opposed to what they see as a plot to segregate the capital.
The measure has already generated noisy street protests by several hundred citizens from Adhamiyah, the Sunni district which is to be enclosed by a ring of checkpoints and six-tonne (14,000 pound) concrete blocks. On Wednesday, Shiite leaders called for a similar march in nearby Sadr City, which ironically is one of the districts from which militia fighters have launched attacks on Sunni civilians in Adhamiyah.
Around 300 supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in Sadr City chanting "No, no to sectarian isolation", while officials of his movement read a statement from their leader through loudspeakers.
Comments
Comments are closed.