Conflicting stories about that great wall of Baghdad that we're building to divide the Sunnis from the Shiites. LA Times reports:
U.S. and Iraqi military officials scrambling to deflect criticism of a wall being erected to separate a volatile Sunni Muslim neighborhood from surrounding Shiite areas insisted Monday that the structure is not a wall at all.
It's a barrier.The distinction comes because it is a temporary structure, they said of the 14,000-pound slabs of concrete placed side by side on the edge of Sunni-dominated Adhamiya, in northeastern Baghdad. When completed, it is expected to be 3 miles long.
The comments were the latest attempt to quiet a controversy that erupted last week after the U.S. military unit building the structure proudly announced its mission and dubbed the project "The Great Wall of Adhamiya." In a press release, it said Adhamiya, which has fallen into severe disrepair as a result of the war, would be like "an exclusive gated community" when the barrier was completed...
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite, said Sunday night that he opposed the project and had ordered it halted.
But Iraqi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Qassim Musawi said at a news conference Monday that the project would go on and said Maliki had supported the barrier idea. Opposition arose after exaggerated media reports making the structure sound like the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China or the barrier being built by Israel in and around the West Bank, he said.
"There's a difference between constructing a security barrier and a security wall," said an infuriated Musawi. "Some media said the security forces will construct a security wall. This is inaccurate and groundless. As I said, these will be barriers."
The difference between barriers and walls, according to Musawi and a U.S. spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. Mark Fox, is that the concrete slabs can be moved once the security situation improves. They also noted that Baghdad already is rife with barriers, including piles of sandbags, coils of barbed wire and trenches.
The semantic debate mirrors that between Israelis and Palestinians over the partially completed Israeli-built barrier in the West Bank, which is composed of fences, concrete slabs, trenches and patrol roads.
The Iraqi controversy is an indicator of the fine line the military must walk as it tries to enforce a new security plan, which is seen as a last-ditch effort to quell Baghdad's violence, without further alienating a populace that blames the U.S.-led invasion for most of its problems.
"People want to have freedom of movement," Fox said. "But at the same time there is a requirement for security."
"Freedom of movement" used to be one of the phrases we deployed to beat up on the Soviet Union's use of walls. Now it is being used against us. And this distinction between "barriers" and "walls"? Again, its reminiscent of something that a Soviet premiere would have once said.
Either way, I think Kevin Drum is right. Either Maliki was for the wall before he was against it, or he is such an ineffective leader that he had no idea it was even being built. When our entire Iraq policy hinges on the development of effective political leadership, neither is option is even the least bit comforting.
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