Photo By Staff Sgt. Michael Pryor | An Iraqi contractor attaches chains to a huge 14,000 pound concrete barrier so that a...... read more read more
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By Sgt. Mike Pryor
2nd BCT, 82nd Abn. Div. Public Affairs
CAMP TAJI, Iraq – According to an old proverb, good fences make good neighbors. Paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division are putting that idea to the test in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district by building a three-mile protective wall on the dividing line between a Sunni enclave and the surrounding Shiite neighborhood.
Paratroopers with the 407th Brigade Support Battalion began emplacing the first section of the wall during an overnight operation April 10 -11. They will be putting new barriers in almost nightly until the wall is complete.
The area the wall will protect is the largest predominately-Sunni neighborhood in East Baghdad. Majority-Shiite neighborhoods surround it on three sides. Like other religiously divided regions in the city, the area has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.
"Shiites are coming in and hitting Sunnis, and Sunnis are retaliating across the street," said Capt. Scott McLearn, of Gaithersburg, Md., an assistant operations officer with 407th BSB.
The wall is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence. Planners hope the creation of the wall will help restore law and order by providing a way to screen people entering and exiting the neighborhood – allowing residents and people with legitimate business in, while keeping death squads and militia groups out.
"(The wall) is on a fault line of Sunni and Shia, and the idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence by controlling who has access to the neighborhoods," said Capt. Marc Sanborn, brigade engineer for 2nd BCT, 82nd Airborne Division, of Savannah, Ga., who helped plan the project.
When the wall is complete, traffic control points manned by Iraqi army soldiers will provide the only means of entrance into the community, Sanborn said.
"They'll be able to control who comes in and out of there," said McLearn.
Around the brigade, the project has been jokingly referred to as "The Great Wall of Adhamiyah." But in fact, the concept is closer to an exclusive gated community in the U.S. than it is to China's great wall, Sanborn said.
"That community will be completely gated and protected," said Lt. Col. Thomas Rogers, commander of the 407th BSB.
Sanborn stressed that when the project is complete, security on both sides of the wall is going to be increased.
"It's really for the security of all the people of Adhamiyah, not just one side or the other," he said.
Sunnis inside the wall can take comfort knowing the added security will prevent gangs of Shiite extremists from being able to come into the area and target residents for extortion and murder.
"Those pinch points are going to cut off their access routes and limit their mobility," said Staff Sgt. Michael Mortimer of Keokuk, Iowa, a platoon sergeant with A Co., 407th BSB.
But the Shiite communities on the other side of the wall will also benefit. When the wall is in place, Sunni terrorists will no longer be able to use the neighborhood as a staging point for attacks against Shiites, said Sanborn.
Coalition forces will also see advantages from the wall. The barriers will make it more difficult for insurgents to plant roadside bombs along routes traveled by coalition and Iraqi forces operating in the area.
"You're not going to be able to just walk over here, set an IED, and then walk back across the street," said 2nd Lt. William Archer of Desoto, Ill., a tank platoon leader with the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment out of Schweinfurt, Germany.
But before any of these changes can occur, the wall has to be in place. It took Chinese laborers hundreds of years to create the Great Wall. The 407th BSB hopes to be finished with its wall in a month. The first night of emplacing barriers, April 10, illustrated some of the hurdles the paratroopers face in the operation.
The convoy of more than a dozen vehicles left Camp Taji under cover of darkness. Long flatbed trucks carried the stacks of huge concrete barriers – each weighing 14,000 pounds – that would be winched into place like dominoes to make the wall. Gun trucks to the front and rear provided security.
The danger of the mission was evident from the start. Only minutes after the convoy left Taji, it was hit by small arms fire.
The paratroopers pressed on into Adhamiyah, where curfew was in effect and the streets were deserted. The convoy crawled along until it reached the link up point.
The cranes, towering over everything else on the road, were waiting for them, along with an escort of Archer's tanks. But there was a problem: the convoy was on the wrong side of the street, and barriers in the middle of the road made it impossible to cross over to where the cranes were.
But then Pfc. Sonia Padron bulldozed a cement barrier out of the way with her humvee and the huge flatbeds painstakingly squeezed through the narrow passage.
No one wanted to stay on the streets any longer than they had to. As the paratroopers quickly undid the straps on their pallets, the crane operators scrambled around attaching chains so that the cranes could swing the barriers into place. In less than an hour, all the barriers had been set in position.
On the way home, one of the vehicles punctured a tire, and the convoy halted to fix it. An electrical storm was raging. As paratroopers worked quickly to attach a tow bar to the downed vehicle, flashes of lightning tore through the sky.
It started to rain, and then someone heard machine gun fire coming from the direction of some nearby buildings. The drenched gunners swiveled in their turrets anxiously. Finally, the tow bar was ready and the paratroopers moved out again.
Ten hours after departing, the convoy returned to Camp Taji. The exhausted, wet paratroopers went home to sleep. In less than 12 hours, they'd have to repeat the whole operation again.
Mortimer said he expects the long nights to continue until all the barriers are emplaced and the wall is complete.
It's a brutal schedule, he said, but the thought that the wall might one day save the life of a fellow soldier or an innocent civilian gives him all the motivation he needs.
"If it works," he concluded, "it will all be worth it."
| Date Taken: | 04.16.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 04.16.2007 11:14 |
| Story ID: | 9931 |
| Location: | TAJI, IQ |
| Web Views: | 1,125 |
| Downloads: | 1,051 |
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