Saturday, February 10, 2007

Gated communities will add to Baghdad security-TimesOnline
I assume they won't be worrying about whether everybody's mailbox is the same shade of beige. If anyplace needs gates and walls, it would be those poor folks in Baghdad.

The American general taking on the task of purging Baghdad of insurgents plans to establish several “gated communities” to provide extra security for Sunnis and Shias, according to a senior US defence official. General David Petraeus, who takes over command of the multinational force in Iraq today, believes that Fallujah, the Sunni stronghold 40 miles (64km) west of the capital, seized by US Marines two years ago after driving out extremists, is a model for other communities, the official said. Fallujah was set up as a gated community in which all the inhabitants were required to have biometric ID cards, after Operation Phantom Fury when US Marines wrested back control from Sunni extremists and Muslim clerics. The official said: “I think there are certain areas in Baghdad where we will have to control access with checkpoints because otherwise there will be people trying their best to blow them up.”

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