Iraqis opposing US army’s movement control plan

This particular technique of movement control used by occupation armies is often called “quadrillage”– from when the French used it in Vietnam or in portions of Algeria. Strategic hamlets play the same function. So, of course, does the draconian system of invasive movement controls that Israel has maintained in the occupied West Bank for many years now…
But some smart-alecky officers in the US occupation army in Baghdad decided to call it a “gated communities” plan, instead. Never mind that in the US “gated communities” are a major marker of social inequalities, as well as a way for rich people to “gate themselves off” from taking any responsibility for the quality of life in the broader communities around them… I guess the officers who chose that particular name for the phenomenon thought that it sounded like something fairly desirable– or at least, sanitized, or acceptable??
(Note to Gen. Petraeus and his political masters: the French army is no longer in either Vietnam or Algeria. It actually didn’t work for them, did it?)
In that WaPo piece linked to above, reporter Karin Brulliard reported on one of these quadrillage projects in southern Ghazaliyah, which she described in these terms:

    The square-mile neighborhood of about 15,000 people now has one entrance point for civilian vehicles and three military checkpoints that are closed to the public.
    In some sealed-off areas, troops armed with biometric scanning devices will compile a neighborhood census by recording residents’ fingerprints and eye patterns and will perhaps issue them special badges, military officials said. At least 10 Baghdad neighborhoods are slated to become or already are gated communities, said Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, the deputy commander of American forces in Baghdad.

One entrance point for 15,000 people? Why, that makes it sound just as economy-strangling as the situation in the occupied West Bank! I wonder where the US Army got their “brilliant” idea from, anyway??
Brulliard reported this bit of sophisticated (not!) “strategic thinking” from First Lt. Sean Henley, 24, there in Ghazaliyeh: “If we keep the bad guys out, then we win.”
She heard a lot more wisdom from a couple of the Iraqis whom she listened to:

    Maj. Hathem Faek Salman… fears the barriers are more likely to anger residents than shut out violence.
    “This is not a good plan,” Salman, 40, had said before the meeting. “If my region were closed by these barriers, I would hate the army, because I would feel like I was in a big jail. . . . If you want to make the area secure and safe, it is not with barriers. We have to win the trust of the people.”
    The next day, a convoy rumbled out to Bakriyah, a small village west of Ghazaliyah — just outside the walls and a little more than two miles from the civilian checkpoint. It was a peaceful mission: to track down a town leader who is on a local citizens’ council that the soldiers meet with regularly. The man, Najim Abdullah, had skipped a recent meeting, and the soldiers thought his absence might have been to protest the barriers.
    … Abdullah, cross-legged in a gray dishdasha, or traditional robe, said he had missed the meeting because of an emergency. But the gated community idea, he said, “doesn’t make any sense.” His villagers had long driven into Ghazaliyah’s west end to go to its markets or continue toward central Baghdad. Now they would have to drive around it.
    “The barriers cannot be moved until all of the Ghazaliyah barrier plan is in place,” responded Lt. Lance Rae, 25. “But we will not forget the people down here. They’ve been very faithful to us.”
    “It’s your order. I disagree with it. But I accept it,” Abdullah said. “It does not matter to me. It matters to the people.”
    Abdullah rose, turned toward the blank white wall and sketched an invisible picture of the area with his hands. He pointed left, to Bakriyah. And a few feet right, to the checkpoint.
    “It will take two hours to get from here to here!” he said.
    Rae simply nodded and said, “Security is the key.”

I do wonder, though, at the journalistic decisionmaking involved in the construction of Brulliard’s article. Why are the views of these Iraqis put in only near the end of the piece– almost as a disposable afterthought? I would have thought they should constitute the lead and main thrust of the article. And why, too, does she make no reference to that other very evident example of a “barrier” that everyone else in the Middle East has as a touch-stone?
Anyway, Iraqi “PM” Nouri al-Maliki also hurried to say he wanted the wall-building exercise to stop. But he is out of the country– currently touring some other Arab capitals. And while he’s away from home, the “Iraqi military” which is supposed to report to him, seemed to have its own idea what should happen:

    The chief Iraqi military spokesman said Monday the prime minister was responding to exaggerated reports about the barrier.
    “We will continue to construct the security barriers in the Azamiyah neighborhood. This is a technical issue,” Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said. “Setting up barriers is one thing and building barriers is another. These are moveable barriers that can be removed.”

That, though the US Ambassador in Baghdad had already said he would “respect Maliki’s wishes” on the matter.
In that story, AP’s Lauren Frayer also reported from Baghdad that,

    hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Azamiyah to oppose what they called “a big prison.”

Juan Cole noted that prominent Kurdish pol Mahmoud Osman described the quadrillage plan as “the peak of failure.”
And Reidar Visser wrote this about the scheme:

    Ordinary Iraqis – Sunnis and Shiites alike – have already reacted angrily to the idea of “gated communities”. It is now high time that the wider world understands how these reactions are linked to a more basic ideal of sectarian coexistence and that solutions devised for the Balkans will often tend to be highly irrelevant in Iraq. Iraqis of different sects may be in violent conflict with each other, but they nevertheless detest the territorial expression of sectarian identities, which they traditionally see as belonging to the private domain. Above all, the enshrinement (takris) of sectarian differences in government structures is a long-standing taboo in Iraqi political discourse. In this way, the “gated communities” idea shares a major flaw with the Gelb–Biden plan of dividing Iraq according to sectarian criteria: it is a “solution” which the Iraqis themselves are not seeking. To many Iraqis, “gated communities” will first and foremost mean ugly, permanent scars – even if the idea may well have been conceived with noble intentions of “securing Baghdad neighbourhoods”.

He also makes the quite correct point that the effect of “gated communities”– and this is the case in Florida or in Iraq– is to “tear the social fabric”.
The broad, multi-community resistance to this plan is some of the best news I’ve heard from Iraq for a long time.

11 thoughts on “Iraqis opposing US army’s movement control plan”

  1. “Gated” or rather “ghettoed” communities ?
    1. While gated communities “tear the social fabric” between inside and outside, they might strengthen the fabric inside the community.
    2. Which one is the in-side and the out-side in a gated community ? Could insiders provide a different view from outsiders ?
    3. answer from your favourite philosopher, Epicure, Spinoza, or even Marquis de Sade, who reportedly put a lock in (i.e. “inside”) his cell while jailed in the Bastille’, “in order not to be disturbed”…..

  2. Jean, you have hit upon the reason why the “gated community” term is a sick joke. Whatever their faults, the thing that makes an enclosed area a gated community and not a prison is that the people who live in it control the “lock” and choose to live in it, which is not the case here.

  3. I guess this just goes to show that even the much heralded Gen. Petraeus and his crew still don’t get it some of the time. As Juan Cole has pointed out the “Wall” that the MSM don’t want to address in their articles on this issue is, of course, the Israeli Apartheid wall in the West Bank. No Arab can go along with any plan that looks like the Israeli wall. Such walls may be a great idea in dealing with insurgencies in other parts of the world, but Petraeus and company seem to have had a tin ear with respect to Arab sensitivities on this issue. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is always the 800 pound gorilla sitting quietly in the corner, waiting to rear its ugly head.

  5. P.S Imagine a one square mile fenced in community with one gate subjected to nightly mortar barrages, or worse yet, escape from and response to a truck full of C4 and chlorine.

  6. Divide and rule – America’s plan for Baghdad
    By Robert Fisk
    “There is no doubt that at the White House there is no thought of leaving Iraq. This freezes all discourse and reality based planning, diplomatic settlements, and quarantine. Instead, desperate measures compound on each other, proliferating Warsaw Ghetto“.
    .
    Some news tell the contractor who doing those concert blocks and the advice they got is from Israelis a advising US to do like what they done o Palestine, that contractor (Zeev Belinsky,) who built Israeli concert wall he doing the job in Iraq now.
    Don’t forgot this not new in US history as they done it with Red Indians before.

  7. Mr. Brian Conniff
    President of Al Hurra TV Channel, USA
    Dear Mr. Brian:
    I find myself obliged to start this latter as: I am Emad Alkhafaji or as widely known; Emad Ashour, a previous opinion prisoner who was jailed and tortured in the eighties in Iraq. I was forced to flee my country more than sixteen years ago when the only way to voice a different opinion was the language of aggressive resistance. After a long journey between different refugee camps and destinations, and various American and Arabic media organizations, the dream of free Iraq that is devoid of tyranny came true. It is a special honor for me to be a witness to that realization through journalism from the very early stages.
    I was availed the opportunity to establish the first office for SAWA in Baghdad, followed by the first office of Al Hurra in Iraq. That opportunity is a shared vision with many other independent Iraqi journalists, a vision that make me not once regret leaving Washington and settling in Iraq since April 9th, 2003.
    To be candid, working in Iraq is not an easy proposition. This is not because of the average Iraqi who is keen on a free media that will transmit his sufferings to the world at large, but because it is very difficult to convince Iraqi politicians that free media is a God given right in a civilized and free world. A free media is one that is not employed to praise governments and ignore the public opinion on its performance.
    There are many examples one could cite, but focusing on one person or incident is a necessity that was dictated by my first meeting with Mr. Larry Register. A meeting that I would have preferred to include only the two of us as I have made very clear to Mr. Register, giving him the freedom to act on any information that he deem necessary. That request was not honored and the person in question did join us, I still maintain that the confidentiality and sensitivity of that meeting could no longer be guaranteed. I still also maintain that the person in question is part of the problem and not part of the solution.
    I am not and will not challenge Mr. Register executive decisions. I have refrained from that involvement since giving up the leadership in the Baghdad office in 2005. I am quite content with my show (Burj Babel) that offers me the opportunity to peek into the Iraqis daily lives, a show Iraqis came to identify with to the point of exchanging notable parts of it on their cell phones.
    I came to the verge of resignation in protest of the penetration and sabotage of Al Hurra by different political parties in Iraq and I feel I am at that point now, in protest of something far more serious than similar occurrences in the past. The breech of Al Hurra basic code of conduct is represented by the appointment of Mr. Hamad Al Kefai as the director of Al Hurra Iraq in Washington. This is because:
    1. Mr Al Kefai has founded a political party during the last elections called: ( HAMAD). Al Hurra at that time gave his party its share of media coverage. Suddenly, the very same person, who is heavily involved in politics as testified by recent history, is presented to us as an independent media expert!
    2. Hamad Al Kefai is a politician and a government official. His appointment as favor to someone either in the US or Iraq will not guarantee the independence of Al Hurra and will not guarantee Al Hurra becoming a tool to serve a certain agenda.
    3. At the local Iraqi media level, Mr Al Kefai is a persona non grata. He had practiced rather extreme suppressive attitudes towards various media organizations when he was the spokesperson of the Governing Council. A fact that was talked about in the Iraqi written media in the shape of articles and caricatures.
    4. Mr Al Kefai band one of Radio SAWA correspondent from covering the Iraqi Governing Council briefings. Because she asked one of the politicians about contradictions in a number of his statements. The politician himself has expressed his admiration to the courage of the correspondent who is still with Al Hurra in Baghdad, despite the pressure placed on us by Mr. Al Kefai to fire her. The evidence is ample if one goes back to the archives of the international and local media during the period in question.
    5. Mr Al Kefai had banned Al Hurra from covering the sessions of the governing council. He went to the extreme in isolating Al Hurra to the point that both the British spksperson: Gareth Bailey and the Allied forces spokesperson Dan Senor intervened to lift the embargo and let us do what we were there to do. Evidently, Mr. Al kefai strength at that time has been his political and I dare say religious connections.
    6. He has abused his political authority to ask Radio SAWA senior management to appoint his brother as a SAWA correspondent without going through the due process. By doing that, he has obviously deprived many Iraqi journalists from a rightful employment opportunity which they could be more deserving than Mr. Al Kefai`s brother!
    7. Al Hurra is obviously a TV channel, neither a Radio station nor a newspaper. The least it deserves is someone who is versed in the work process of a TV station.
    8. Finally and employing the equal opportunity principles, the last four years in Iraq have produced a hard working and dedicated cadre of Iraqi journalists. Some of which are better professionals than me or some others who were only attracted to Iraq when it started to mean a multi thousand dollars contracts and a house at the green zone.
    I am not against politicians in Iraq as a concept. I enjoy wide working and fruitful relationships with many of them, among which is Mr. Al kefai himself. However, I do wish that Al Hurra, that I helped to establish with many fellow independent journalists, would be lead by a politician who poses as an independent journalist. The danger then that the channel will become a tool serving an agenda of one party or another, I will not work under a leadership that ignores the fundamentals of establishing SAWA and Al Hurra after the terrible events of September 11.
    I assume there is still ample time to verify my statements above and those put forward in our meeting. Please understand that this is not about Mr. Al Kefai per se, but his appointment was the wrong step on the path to reform. I feel it is my duty as a founder of Al Hurra in Iraq to highlight the issues at hand.
    I still think that the decision to appoint Mr. Al kefai was based on good intentions and/or misguided information. The issue of misguided advice is a serious issue that the US has been enduring and suffering of in Iraq in the last four years. It is that misguided attitude that made the very same Iraqi who cheered the US army in 2003 is now on the very same streets cursing them and asking them to leave!
    Good intentions got us to the dilemma we live in now at the political level, I do hope and pray that it will not do the same to us at the media level. If this is indeed happens, I, at the personal level, will neither have a home country to live in which is Iraq nor a surrogate home country to go back to, which is the US.
    I think the American taxpayer and the free Iraqi in Fallujah or Sadr city and taxi driver who dreams of crossing the Sarrafiya Bridge once again; all would want Al Hurra to be Hurra (free) again!
    Until that happens, please accept my resignation from Al Hurra.

  8. An interesting sidelight to this tactic of building walls is that the Strategic Hamlet (I’m not referring to General Petraus) concept was actually modelled on a programme the British had used in Malaya during the “Emergency.” Like most counter terrorism work in the Emergency it was staffed in large part by demobilised members of the Palestine Police whose experience in fighting terrorists was invaluable to the Army in Malaya. The Malay Kampongs were fenced off and the men were given weapons (shotguns) and training so that they might defend their villages against “Terrorists” who were for the most part ethnic Chinese.
    So in 1948 the Palestine Police introduced to Malaya a divide and rule tactic which they had employed against Zionist insurgents. Sixty years on the residual legatees of the Stern Gang…

  9. In the interview, Tenet acknowledged that he used the phrase “slam dunk” during a conversation with Bush and other key advisers in December 2002. But Tenet said the phrase was an offhand remark used to describe the ease with which a public case for war could be made. “We can put a better case together for a public case,” Tenet told “60 Minutes.” “That’s what I meant.”
    Helena, howmany guys you list for “Peace, justice, and war-crimes courts” will be hold like these jerks

  10. “the much heralded Gen. Petraeus and his crew still don’t get it some of the time.”
    I really, really, really hope that your “some of the time” was intentionally ironic!

  11. The always brilliant American military calls it “gated communities”, but a ghetto is a ghetto no matter in what fancy terms you dress it.

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