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Removal of roadblocks in Iraq’s capital oils traffic and trade
BAGHDAD, Aug 8, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Suha Abdelhamid’s life has dramatically
improved over the past two months — thanks to the removal of fortified
roadblocks that had made her daily commute in Iraq’s capital a misery.
Like people across Baghdad, the young dentist finds a certain joy in
rediscovering streets that were previously behind a tortuously slow slalom of
concrete barriers and checkpoints.
“Before, I never thought of passing through here” said Abdelhamid, as she
shopped in a small supermarket in her wealthy home district of Al-Bounouk.
The removal of barriers and roadblocks is a work in progress.
After years of sectarian violence that culminated in the Islamic State
group seizing around a third of Iraq in 2014, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi
declared victory over the Sunni jihadists in December.
“More than 1,000 streets and alleyways have been reopened in Baghdad since
last year”, said General Saad Maan, spokesman for the city’s security forces
high command.
A total of “305 checkpoints and roadblocks have been taken down and the
campaign is continuing”, he added.
– Sectarian districts –
The first concrete walls in the old city sprang up in 2007, as violence
between Sunni and Shiite militias intensified.
The Sunni dominated Al-Adhamiya district was the first to be sealed off by
a “separation wall”.
Other neighbourhoods followed.
“In chasing and terrorising residents in mixed quarters, the 2005-08 civil
war enabled the militias to establish homogeneous strongholds”, Iraq
researcher and author Caecilia Pieri told AFP. In the decade since then, more
than eight million citizens and nearly two million vehicles have had to
endure daily jams in the capital, caused by the walls, other barriers and
security checks.
But thanks to key routes and feeder roads being reopened, traffic
circulation is now improving in some districts.
For 27-year-old civil servant Ahmed Abdelrahman, bringing his arthritic
mother to a doctor in the largely Sunni district of Al-Harthiya was once a
nightmare.
The jams between security checks used to make the journey a feat of
endurance for her.
But “everything has changed since they shut the checkpoints and reopened
certain streets”, said Abdelrahman, helping his mother out of the car and
into the street.
– Uptick in trade –
The dismantling of the barriers has also seen trade flow more freely.
“We could not bring trucks in and customers had to walk a long way to
access the shops”, said trader Rami Dhia in Al-Bounouk’s main commercial
street.
Business “activity has soared by four times” since the cement barriers were
removed, Dhia added.
But Abdallah Ali, who sells children’s clothes, will never forget the many
years “when we spent several days in a row selling nothing”.
“Many shops closed” because of the roadblocks, he lamented.
While the economy took a hit from the checkpoints and walls, their
presence made law enforcement easier, security specialist Hussein Allawi told
AFP.
The gradual removal of the barriers is “proof that security is improving
and that victory has been won over terrorism”, he said.
“The next objective is to bring Baghdad back to normal life”, he added.
That will require sustained peaceful cohabitation between the Shiite and
Sunni communities, Pieri said.
“We must hope that the dismantling of these walls will be both the symptom
and the cause of a real return to this cohabitation”, she said.
But with barriers still making his life difficult, 48-year-old taxi driver
Mahmud Shaker is not celebrating yet.
“They say we’re done with terrorism — but the streets remain blocked”, he
said.
BSS/AFP/RY/1718 hrs