Iraq is a nation of walls: Tall concrete blast walls built during the past six years, ancient mud-brick barricades that date to antiquity and walls built of various materials from the centuries in between. The newest walls protect Iraqis from one another, but they also divide families. They separate the government from the people, and foreigners from Iraqis.
Idyllic murals of flowers and scenic canoe rides mask bullet holes and graffiti, and campaign posters for the candidates who are running in provincial elections Jan. 31 paper many of the remaining free surfaces.
Peel away the layers, however, and you'll find Iraq's recent history: the U.S.-led invasion nearly six years ago, the Sunni Muslim insurgency, a sectarian war and now low-level but steady violence in a year of elections.
In two neighborhoods, one that surrounds a water-purification plant in the Sunni city of Fallujah, the other in Baghdad's poor Shiite Muslim district of Amil, once controlled by the Mahdi Army militia of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr, two walls tell two histories of the last six years.
FALLUJAH
It was in Fallujah that the U.S.-led invasion came to grief. Sunnis, disenfranchised and marginalized by an invasion that gave dominance to Iraq's Shiite majority, lost their jobs when the U.S. disbanded Saddam Hussein's army and closed factories. Homegrown rebel groups allied with the foreign-led insurgents of al Qaida in Iraq rather than tolerate a Western military on their soil.
The province rebelled, and two punishing U.S. offensives devastated Fallujah. Ultimately, though, the province was unwilling to live under the harsh interpretation of Islam that al Qaida in Iraq enforced after declaring the region an Islamic state, and the Sunni Awakening movement to drive it out was born. The province is relatively calm now.
Along the low stucco wall that snakes around the water plant, Bassam al Hamadi has stood guard for four years and watched the face of the wall change.
Spray-painted on the wall are the words "God Bless Saddam." Another layer of spray paint obscures some of the words. A banner covers both: "Choose from those who guide you to the good, not those who cheat you." It's by the Independent Bloc of One Homeland, a party that opposes the decentralized federal structure sought by Kurds and the most powerful Shiite party in Iraq, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. The Independent Bloc of One Homeland, like many Sunnis, fears that this would break Iraq into three nations.
It's one party of hundreds that are vying for seats on the provincial council, and its slogan brings the wall into 2009, when more than 14,500 candidates are competing for about 440 seats in provincial assemblies.
Hamadi peeled away one poster to reveal what was underneath.
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