on another apartheid wall (p. cockburn):
Residents of a Sunni enclave of Baghdad demonstrated and shouted slogans yesterday against a newly built wall sealing off their neighborhood from the rest of the city. About 2,000 people marched through al-Adhamiyah in east Baghdad carrying banners saying that their district was being turned into "a big prison". "Adhamiyah will be isolated from all other areas," said one man in a cafe in the district. "We'll be like the Palestinians and we will not accept that." The US military in Baghdad says it is constructing the 12ft high walls to create so-called "gated communities" in five different districts in Baghdad to protect them from sectarian attack.
(...) But the Sunni see the walls as being primarily directed against insurgents, just as the French army walled off the Casbah in Algiers during the Algerian war in the 1950s and early 1960s to prevent anti-French fighters moving through the city. Sunnis in Baghdad are worried that the soldiers or police at the entrances to sealed off districts will be Shia soldiers and police who may detain anybody.
(...) Banners carried by demonstrators yesterday proclaimed, "Separation is a big prison for al-Adhamiyah citizens" and "Children in al-Adhamiyah want a Baghdad without walls".
(...) People in al-Adhamiyah say they fear that, contrary to US and Iraqi army expectations, their district will become a fortress ruled by al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Extreme Sunni groups are allegedly already killing men who wear shorts or smoke or listen to music in public. A wall is also useless in preventing rockets or mortars being fired into the area.