Sectarian violence increasing in Iraq

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FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Sept 16



Militants step up Iraq attacks, kill 27

Iraq's war makes intimate enemies

In Baghdad, a Sunni in a Shiite enclave finds that old friendships can evaporate, leaving only a desire for vengeance.

By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 16, 2007

BAGHDAD -- -- When a friend from the old neighborhood rang Abu Ali after sunrise one day this month to tell him that his house had been destroyed, the middle-aged Sunni confessed to himself that he felt happy.

He turned to his wife in bed and told her that the Americans had flattened their home in the Washash neighborhood and killed some of the Shiite militia members who had kicked them out last September.

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Their friendship shows the very intimate nature of the war in Iraq -- a war in which your enemies are often people you've known much of your life; in which your neighbors are often behind the crimes committed against you; in which every slight, every misdeed, every injustice is recorded and the desire for vengeance runs deep.

Segregation spreads
As U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and President Bush laud the success of the Baghdad security plan and hail the start of a return to normality, the Iraqi capital is awash with at least 171,000 displaced people, including Abu Ali. Many Sunnis and Shiites have retreated to virtually segregated districts sealed off by blast walls and razor wire to protect themselves from their rival religious sect.

Even U.S. commanders in Iraq acknowledge that there is no easy way to repair the damage of the country's civil war, no easy way to return people to their old lives. They say that whatever comes next in Baghdad will be a break from the past.

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