A LITTLE MORE FROM REUTERS

ANALYSIS-U.S. wall seen worsening division of Baghdad
25 Apr 2007 07:34:48
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

Work on the Adhamiya barrier began well after the start in mid-February of the latest U.S. security plan, which also involves a "surge" of around 30,000 extra American troops.

Too little, too late, said London-based defence analyst Paul Beaver. "If you don't have sufficient troops, you have to take strange measures. And the Americans don't have sufficient troops. The Iraqi army and police are ineffective."

"All of this is trying to find solutions to violence short of what is actually required, which is to find a political compromise between all the groups," said Joost Hiltermann, a senior International Crisis Group analyst in Amman.

"I know the Americans are trying to suppress violence in order to bring people to the table, but I see no real effort to bring people to the table."

"Many of them always saw themselves as Iraqis first and then as Sunnis, but secular," said Hiltermann. "To cast them now as Sunnis and confine them to a neighbourhood is the ultimate insult. They see it as Shi'ites trying to exclude them."

"This Iraqi government is not capable, and probably not willing, to effect the kind of reconciliation that would bring about a new national compact," Hiltermann said.