Baghdad Wall Pics

[click on images to see larger versions]

Walls are becoming fashionable now in countries where the US, Israel or its allies are involved. The Israelis are almost done building one, the US wants to build a bigger one on the Mexican border, the Saudis are building one on their Iraqi border, and now inside Baghdad the US is putting one up to block off predominantly Sunni Adhamiya from surrounding Shi'a neighborhoods. No comment from me this time, but a friend in Iraq in the US Army was kind enough to send along the photos above - thanks, you know who you are - and a couple of his own comments which I copy unedited below with his view:

I'm sending you two pics of the wall. They were the best i could do this week. It was hard to get over to that part of the city this week for some reason. Anyhow. In one of the pics you can see two different walls running top left to bottom right, the one further in the distance is the western wall that runs north south that entraps the entire area, the other wall that is in the foreground is just a local wall keeping neighborhoods seperate. There are crazy events that still are happening in these neighborhoods, but the statistics have proven it a much safer place than before.

[Correction: An Iraqi friend emailed to point out I had mistakenly said these pictures were of Adhamiya. His comments - "Thanks a lot for these photos. These are from Dora, not Adhamiya. I didn't even know they built a wall over there. The empty street blocked by the wall in the northern wall photo was the place of a vast outdoors market, and you can see the Chaldean and Nestorian churches of St. John the Baptist and Mar Georges in the background and a mosque farther south. Sad."]