Sectarian Hatred Pulls Apart Iraq's Mixed Towns
Scott Nelson/World Picture News, for The New York Times
Ali Nasir Jabr, 12, survived by feigning sleep as gunmen killed five in his family at their home in Samarra.
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 20, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 19 - Abu Noor's town had become so hostile to Shiites that his wife had not left the house in a month, his family could no longer go to the medical clinic and mortar shells had been lobbed at the houses of two of his religious leaders.
"I couldn't open the door and stand in my yard," he said.
So when Abu Noor, a Shiite from Tarmiya, a heavily Sunni Arab town north of here, ran into an old friend, a Sunni who faced his own problems in a Shiite district in Baghdad, the two decided to switch houses. They even shared a moving van.
Two and a half years after the American invasion, deep divides that have long split Iraqi society have violently burst into full view. As the hatred between Sunni Arabs and Shiites hardens and the relentless toll of bombings and assassinations grows, families are leaving their mixed towns and cities for safer areas where they will not automatically be targets. In doing so, they are creating increasingly polarized enclaves and redrawing the sectarian map of Iraq, especially in Baghdad and the belt of cities around it.
The evidence is so far mostly anecdotal - the government is not tracking the moves. In a rough count, about 20 cities and towns around Baghdad are segregating, according to accounts by local sheiks, Iraqi nongovernmental organizations and military officials, and the families themselves.
Those areas are among the most mixed and the most violent in Iraq - according to the American military, 85 percent of attacks in the country are in four provinces including Baghdad, and two others to its north and west.
The volatile sectarian mix is a holdover from the rule of Saddam Hussein, who gave favors to Sunni Arab landowners in the lush farmland around Baghdad to reinforce loyalties and to protect against Shiites in the south. Shiites came to work the land, and sometimes to own it. Abu Noor moved to Tarmiya in 1987 after the government gave his father land.
"The most violent places are the towns and cities around Baghdad," said Sheik Jalal al-Dien al-Sagheer, a member of Parliament from a religious Shiite party. "It was a circle. It was invented. It did not exist before."
One result has been carnage on a serious scale. In Tarmiya, Abu Noor's close friend who helped pack his furniture and drove it to Baghdad received a letter warning him to leave the town or be killed. Nineteen days later he was shot to death in his carpentry shop in front of his father and brother. In all, at least eight of Abu Noor's friends and close relatives, including a brother, have been killed since the beginning of 2004.
The motives for the attacks are often complicated: the complex webs of tribal affiliations and social status that rule everyday life in Iraq do not always line up as simply as Shiite against Sunni. But increasingly, despite the urging of some Shiite religious leaders and Sunni politicians, the attacks have been: a mostly Sunni Arab fringe is carrying out vicious attacks against civilians, often Shiites, while Shiite death squads are openly stalking Sunnis for revenge, and the Shiite-dominated government makes regular arrests in Sunni Arab neighborhoods.
Expressions of prejudice have been making their way onto walls and into leaflets, too.
In Tarmiya, writing was scrawled on the walls of the city's main streets: "Get out of here, Badr followers! Traitors! Spies!" it said, using a reference to an armed wing of a religious Shiite party. In Madaen, a mixed city south of Baghdad, a list of names appeared on the walls of several municipal buildings in a warning to leave. Many did.
In Samarra last fall, leaflets appeared warning in clumsy childish script that Samarra is a Sunni city.
"We thought at first that they were written by kids and that someone would discipline them," said Sheik Hadi al-Gharawi, an imam who left Samarra, north of Baghdad, a few months ago and now lives in Baghdad. "But later we found they were adults and they were serious."
His nephew, Ahmed Samir al-Gharawi, 15, who moved separately with his family in September, was one of two Shiites in his high school class in Samarra. In January, classmates were probing to see whether his family had voted in a national election. "They were joking to find the truth," he said. "I didn't tell them."
Samarra is a holy place in Shiite Islam with two sacred shrines, and Shiites have lived there for hundreds of years.
Even so, in a pattern similar to that in Tarmiya, Shiite imams were attacked and businesses became targets, Sheik Gharawi said, and Shiites began to leave.
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Ali Nasir Jabr, 12, survived by feigning sleep as gunmen killed five in his family at their home in Samarra.
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 20, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 19 - Abu Noor's town had become so hostile to Shiites that his wife had not left the house in a month, his family could no longer go to the medical clinic and mortar shells had been lobbed at the houses of two of his religious leaders.
"I couldn't open the door and stand in my yard," he said.
So when Abu Noor, a Shiite from Tarmiya, a heavily Sunni Arab town north of here, ran into an old friend, a Sunni who faced his own problems in a Shiite district in Baghdad, the two decided to switch houses. They even shared a moving van.
Two and a half years after the American invasion, deep divides that have long split Iraqi society have violently burst into full view. As the hatred between Sunni Arabs and Shiites hardens and the relentless toll of bombings and assassinations grows, families are leaving their mixed towns and cities for safer areas where they will not automatically be targets. In doing so, they are creating increasingly polarized enclaves and redrawing the sectarian map of Iraq, especially in Baghdad and the belt of cities around it.
The evidence is so far mostly anecdotal - the government is not tracking the moves. In a rough count, about 20 cities and towns around Baghdad are segregating, according to accounts by local sheiks, Iraqi nongovernmental organizations and military officials, and the families themselves.
Those areas are among the most mixed and the most violent in Iraq - according to the American military, 85 percent of attacks in the country are in four provinces including Baghdad, and two others to its north and west.
The volatile sectarian mix is a holdover from the rule of Saddam Hussein, who gave favors to Sunni Arab landowners in the lush farmland around Baghdad to reinforce loyalties and to protect against Shiites in the south. Shiites came to work the land, and sometimes to own it. Abu Noor moved to Tarmiya in 1987 after the government gave his father land.
"The most violent places are the towns and cities around Baghdad," said Sheik Jalal al-Dien al-Sagheer, a member of Parliament from a religious Shiite party. "It was a circle. It was invented. It did not exist before."
One result has been carnage on a serious scale. In Tarmiya, Abu Noor's close friend who helped pack his furniture and drove it to Baghdad received a letter warning him to leave the town or be killed. Nineteen days later he was shot to death in his carpentry shop in front of his father and brother. In all, at least eight of Abu Noor's friends and close relatives, including a brother, have been killed since the beginning of 2004.
The motives for the attacks are often complicated: the complex webs of tribal affiliations and social status that rule everyday life in Iraq do not always line up as simply as Shiite against Sunni. But increasingly, despite the urging of some Shiite religious leaders and Sunni politicians, the attacks have been: a mostly Sunni Arab fringe is carrying out vicious attacks against civilians, often Shiites, while Shiite death squads are openly stalking Sunnis for revenge, and the Shiite-dominated government makes regular arrests in Sunni Arab neighborhoods.
Expressions of prejudice have been making their way onto walls and into leaflets, too.
In Tarmiya, writing was scrawled on the walls of the city's main streets: "Get out of here, Badr followers! Traitors! Spies!" it said, using a reference to an armed wing of a religious Shiite party. In Madaen, a mixed city south of Baghdad, a list of names appeared on the walls of several municipal buildings in a warning to leave. Many did.
In Samarra last fall, leaflets appeared warning in clumsy childish script that Samarra is a Sunni city.
"We thought at first that they were written by kids and that someone would discipline them," said Sheik Hadi al-Gharawi, an imam who left Samarra, north of Baghdad, a few months ago and now lives in Baghdad. "But later we found they were adults and they were serious."
His nephew, Ahmed Samir al-Gharawi, 15, who moved separately with his family in September, was one of two Shiites in his high school class in Samarra. In January, classmates were probing to see whether his family had voted in a national election. "They were joking to find the truth," he said. "I didn't tell them."
Samarra is a holy place in Shiite Islam with two sacred shrines, and Shiites have lived there for hundreds of years.
Even so, in a pattern similar to that in Tarmiya, Shiite imams were attacked and businesses became targets, Sheik Gharawi said, and Shiites began to leave.
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2Next Page > Link Here
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