From left, Iraqi police commander Lt. Col. Ahmed Abdullah, an interpreter, and 1st Sgt. Phong Tran, of the 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, survey a section of the wall in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district. (Mike Pryor / Courtesy of U.S. Army)
From left, Iraqi police commander Lt. Col. Ahmed Abdullah, an interpreter, and 1st Sgt. Phong Tran, of the 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, survey a section of the wall in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district. (Mike Pryor / Courtesy of U.S. Army)
A contractor helps emplace 12-foot-high concrete barriers along a road in Adhamiyah, Baghdad. (Sean Ransford / Courtesy of U.S. Army)
Construction of a controversial, three-mile blast wall in one of Baghdad’s most troubled neighborhoods was completed recently, following three months of grueling labor and heated protests from Iraqi residents and government officials.
The barrier, which consists of thousands of 12-foot-high concrete slabs, or T-walls, rings much of Adhamiyah — an island of Sunni families in Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite east side.
Engineers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team lowered the final 7-ton slab into place in the early morning darkness of May 28, according to a U.S. military statement issued Tuesday.
U.S. commanders say the barrier will make Adhamiyah a safer neighborhood by restricting incoming and outgoing vehicle traffic to several guarded checkpoints. The project is part of an overall attempt by U.S. forces to quell sectarian violence in the embattled capital.
The plan triggered harsh criticism from both Sunnis and Shiites, who saw darker motives in the wall’s construction. While some compared it to Israel’s West Bank security wall, others insisted the project was part of a larger plan to divide the city into a maze of “gated communities.”
U.S. commanders insisted that this was not the case and that the wall was a temporary security measure.
Troops worked at night to build the wall, enduring attacks from insurgents and hauling concrete barriers and work equipment down roads heavily mined by roadside bombs. In one incident, the brigade’s comamnder, Col. Billy Don Farris, was shot and wounded by a sniper while inspecting the wall.
“We’re exhausted,” Lt. Eric Brumfield, a platoon leader with the 2nd BCT’s 407th Support Battalion, was quoted as saying in the release. “We’re tired of seeing that wall every night. But in the end, we did it. We were able to fight through the [roadside bombs] and the publicity and everything else and got it done.”
Adhamiyah sits on a peninsula on the east bank of the Tigris River, and has suffered frequent rocket and mortar attacks by Shiite militias based across the river or in neighborhoods to the east.
Although construction of a wall would not stop mortar or rocket attacks, commanders decided the wall was a good way of preventing sectarian murder squads or car bombs from passing in or out of the neighborhood. Similar, yet much smaller, barriers have been constructed throughout Baghdad, particularly in market areas that have suffered attacks from suicide car bombers.
Commanders said the wall is already proving effective. The number of murders reported in Adhamiyah has dropped 61 percent since construction began, according to Capt. Jared Purcell, a spokesman for the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, the unit that oversees Adhamiyah.
“We will be in the community with an ear open as to how people feel about the wall, as well as how it is improving security,” Purcell said. “We’re constantly going to be re-evaluating the wall to make sure it is providing maximum security with minimum disruption to peoples’ lives.”
The military announced the project in a lengthy press release in early April, but commanders were unprepared for the publicity storm that followed. Sunni residents and clerics accused U.S. forces of herding them into a concrete prison and claimed that the wall would only make them more vulnerable to sectarian violence.
Shiites also criticized the wall. Radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said its construction showed the “evil will” of the coalition and called for demonstrations.
At one point, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered a halt to the wall’s construction, but later backed off on that demand, claiming that he responded to exaggerations in media reports.
The new American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, publicly defended the plan.
Throughout, soldiers constructing the wall said they didn’t know what the fuss was all about.
Brumfield said he was shocked by the response, because he considered the barrier no big deal.
“It’s just like driving at home where you have barriers beside the highway. It’s no different from that,” Brumfield said in Tuesday’s news release.
