Remember When Everyone Was Howling About The Walls We Started Building Around Baghdad Neighborhoods?
Sidebar: If China could build a giant wall all those centuries ago, how could it be impossible for us to do something similar along the Mexican border? Can it really be so impractical? Or is that just a talking point? Worked in Palestine, worked in Baghdad. Impossible here?
Wire
When the U.S. decided to start building walls around Baghdad neighborhoods over the Spring, there were howls from across Iraq. But those controversial barriers are the key to today’s massive operations to retake Iraq’s insurgent strongholds, the coalition forces’ chief counterinsurgency adviser tells DANGER ROOM.
Retired Colonel (and present-day blogger) David Kilcullen says that the walls were necessary to turn the security of Baghdad into a more manageable problem — one that could handled with somewhat fewer American troops.
“The point of the walls was to structure the environment, to hold the city and keep it safe,” he tells DANGER ROOM. “It’s like [keeping] guard inside a concrete building, instead of in the middle of a field… You don’t need vast maneuver forces to do it… It’s the principle of economy of force.”
Now that the eleven sets of walls across Baghdad have been built — “controlling access, preventing attacks on the community, and preventing attacks from being launched on someone else,” Kilcullen says — “we’re now in a position to move against the [insurgent] havens.”
“Murders and sectarian killings have dropped 63%” in Baghdad’s Adhamiya neighborhood, since the wall has been put in place, he claims. Residents are “thrilled.”
Initially, the barrier there — and in other locations around Iraq’s capitol — drew protests and international outcry. Iraqi premier Nouri al-Maliki even called for a halt in construction, saying, “I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop. There are other methods to protect neighborhoods.” But Kilcullen asserts that most of the local protests were “information operations” conducted by insurgent groups, meant to undermine U.S. plans to improve Baghdad’s security.
“Every district in Baghdad [already had] its own defense,” the counterinsurgency adviser says. The walls were built after consultations with local leaders, “figur[ing] out together how to make the community safe, what part of the defenses needed repair.”
Once that construction was completed, the current push outside of Baghdad could begin.
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Kids are playing soccer and walking to school near those walls in relative safety. Excellent.
You can’t stop the bad guys/girls with good intentions; or political rhetoric, or with feel-good legislation. The choices in this regard are limited.
You can 1. jail them. 2. kill them. or 3. Build a wall and keep numbers 1 and 2 in play.
That 63% stat is very telling. I’d like to hear what the stat in Israel is. Haven’t heard about too many shaheens getting through these days.
It doesn’t stop mortars an unguided rockets, but a wall will certainly interfere with a lone shaheen or make it more difficult for a sniper to get off a clear shot at some innocent kid playing nearby.
JMHO.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:24 pmIf Israel can build a wall, and Iraq can build one too, why in the hell we can’t get our wall built down along the Mexican border?!! Oops! Sorry, I forgot! We need the CHEAP LABOR AND THE CHEAP VOTES! Forget our security because the big corporations can make a decent profit without their cheap Illegal labor!
June 27th, 2007 at 3:08 pmDave Kilcullen is a serving Lt Col in the ADF (Australian Defence Force) he is certainly not retired. He’s currently serving with your General Petraeus in Iraq as a COIN adviser. Kilcullen’s writings appear often on Small Wars Journal
June 27th, 2007 at 6:23 pmTake Care Pat.
Sounds like a good move to safeguard the neighborhoods. Anyone know what that 63% means? Is it month over month stats or what, I don’t understand it out of the context of time.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:42 pm