http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21538570-1702,00.htmlUS forces to 'wall off Baghdad streets'
* April 11, 2007
US FORCES in Baghdad are planning to seal off vast areas of the city with barricades, effectively imprisoning the inhabitants of neighbourhoods, according to The Independent.
"The campaign of 'gated communities' - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and would be the most ambitious counter-insurgency program yet mounted by the US in Iraq," wrote Robert Fisk.
The project to stop the movement of insurgents and weapons would involve joint US-Iraqi "support bases" in nine of the 30 districts to be "gated" off.
Militias would be cleared from civilian streets which would then be walled off and the occupants given ID cards.
Only the occupants would be allowed into these "gated communities" where there were likely to be pass systems, visitor registration and restrictions on movement outside.
"Civilians may find themselves inside a 'controlled population' prison, Fisk said.
He said the system, used in the past and a "spectacular" was as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3200 American troops.
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