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| Volume XV, Fall 2008, Number 3 |
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EXCERPT
Walling Off Iraq: Israel’s Imprint on U.S. Counterinsurgency Doctrine
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| Steve Niva |
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Dr. Niva is a professor of Middle East Studies and International Politics at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. He is currently writing a book on the history of Israeli military strategy and Palestinian suicide bombings.
Since the U.S. military’s 2007 adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, popularly known as “the surge,” the most conspicuous development on the Iraqi political landscape has been a surge in walls. From Baghdad to Mosul, the U.S. military has rapidly constructed scores of massive concrete walls, barriers and checkpoints between and around Iraqi neighborhoods and cities. Euphemistically referred to as “gated communities,” vast areas of Iraq have been sealed off behind concrete walls and sand berms. In Baghdad alone, 12-foot-high concrete walls separate and surround at least 11 Sunni and Shiite communities, and even now subdivide Sadr City.1 Often covered with graffiti and broken by narrow checkpoints where soldiers monitor traffic via newly issued ID cards and biometric scanning devices, these walls have turned Baghdad into dozens of replicated Green Zones, dividing neighbor from neighbor and choking off normal commerce and communication. During a visit to Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood, journalist Nir Rosen observed, Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush’s much-heralded “surge,” Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood.2
If nothing else, any form of dialogue helps avoid needless misunderstandings and tensions.
Informal talks by private citizens and "experts" can address issues that officials cannot openly
deal with, and at least clarify the most contentious and controversial issues on both sides.
Informal or "unofficial" official contacts can deal with many lower-level issues and incidents.
Limited official talks — like the tripartite talks between Iran, Iraq and the United States — can
go further, often defusing potential sources of conflict or easing the situation in high-risk areas
like Iraq and Afghanistan.
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