New Baghdad Crackdown Is Announced

MARC SANTORA, New York Times

The Iraqi government on Tuesday ordered tens of thousands of Baghdad residents to leave homes they are occupying illegally, in a surprising and highly challenging effort to reverse the tide of sectarian cleansing that has left the capital bloodied and Balkanized. He said the government would break into homes and cars it deemed dangerous, open mail and eavesdrop on phone calls. General Qanbar indicated that the plan would be carried out evenly across Baghdad. But critics said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has come under intense criticism for pursuing a sectarian Shiite agenda, might be trying to appease his detractors and may not actually carry out the plan. Some feared that his government might not apply the same pressure to residents of Shiite areas. Since the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra a year ago, the sectarian map of Baghdad has been almost completely redrawn, as Shiites pushed Sunnis from neighborhood after neighborhood. Samantha Power, a public policy professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government who has written widely on genocide, described the plan as either a public relations ploy that would never be enforced, or worse, a prelude to more sectarian cleansing and catastrophe....

continua / continued