Iraqis leaving religiously mixed areas
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- For months, the young Shiite couple could not decide whether to move from Dora, a mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood and one of Baghdad's most dangerous. After death threats, the murder of a neighbor and the birth of their first child, they decided it was time to go.
High rents kept Rana Ali and her husband, Hussein Youssef, from finding a new home in one of the capital's safest areas, where Shiites are dominant, and they could not afford refuge in Iraq's overwhelmingly Shiite south.
Instead, they settled in nearby Saydiyah, another majority Sunni area only marginally safer but with a larger Shiite population than their old neighborhood.
"It's a little better here," said Rana, a 23-year-old law graduate. "Living in Dora the past year was like being in the middle of a battlefield. But we started a life there and we lost a lot to come here."
The decision by the young couple to move is part of disturbing trend in this polarized society. As sectarian tensions rise and talk of civil war spreads, more Iraqis are moving to areas where their religious group is dominant.
The trend appears strongest among the country's Shiite majority, many of whom are targeted by the Sunni-led insurgency and live in religiously mixed or predominantly Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities. Many are forced out by threats, often conveyed in written notes left in homes.
It is unclear how many people have fled their homes, but the numbers clearly are rising.
Hundreds of thousands are believed to have moved to Jordan or Syria. Those who cannot afford to leave the country simply head for new, safer neighborhoods or provinces.
Mohammed Ali, 51, a Baghdad truck driver, said he ferried five Shiite families with all their belongings from Dora to mainly Shiite southern Iraq last week. He said he knew other truck drivers who were busy doing the same.
Elsewhere, Kurdish and Shiite enclaves in parts of Sunni-dominated western Iraq are vanishing, ending decades of peaceful coexistence. Intimidation, threats and murders have forced most Shiites in the rural areas just south of Baghdad to head to the Shiite heartland in the south or to the capital's Shiite neighborhoods.
Mohammed Massoudi, head of Babil province's local government, said Shiites and Sunnis had lived in peace in the provincial capital of Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad. Lately, however, police are receiving a "large number" of complaints by both Sunnis and Shiites that they have been warned to leave rural homes.
Several major highways have become "no go" zones for one community or another. Entire neighborhoods of Baghdad and the southern city of Basra are effectively off-limits to different sects after dark.
In Basra and other southern cities, residents say mixed Shiite-Sunni marriages, often cited by politicians as a barrier to full-blown civil war, are on the decline.
Stoking tensions, Sunni Arab religious and political leaders have urged their supporters to defend themselves following the killings of three Sunni males and the abductions of 20 more by gunmen wearing Interior Ministry uniforms in a northern Baghdad district.
Shiite cleric Adel al-Lami uses language similar to that of a street gang leader when he describes the situation in Mahmoudiya, 19 miles south of Baghdad.
"When we travel, we take our weapons with us," al-Lami told The Associated Press. "Thanks be to God, we have a lot of weapons. If we see that someone is about to be shot at from a car driving by us, we will just toss one of our grenades at them."
Mahmoudiya has become a safe haven for Shiites after many of them were threatened by Sunnis and left nearby farming communities. In Mahmoudiya, they find safety under the protection of the Mahdi Army militia of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the government's Shiite-dominated security forces.
Students in Baghdad's Mustansiriyah University have split into Shiite and Sunni cliques, say lecturers and students there. Tensions, they say, are invariably heightened when Shiite students practice such religious rituals as self-flagellation on campus.
"They disrupt classes and anger Sunni students," said a lecturer who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
Officials consistently deny Shiites are fleeing parts of Baghdad, a mixed city of some 6 million people that wakes up virtually daily to the sound of explosions, gunfire and the clatter of low-flying U.S. helicopters.
Although the extent of the population reshuffling is unclear, the fact that some movement is taking place is undisputed.
Harith al-Yasiri, a bank employee, said he recently sold his home in a mixed neighborhood and moved to Sadr City, the Shiite-dominated district where Shiite militiamen maintain tight control.
"Shiites are being targeted," he said.
After Rana and Youssef were married two years ago, the couple moved from a family home in the New Baghdad neighborhood to Dora to build an independent life. Hussein, 31, converted space at the front of the house they rented into a grocery store.
Threats started coming a year later after Rana became pregnant with their first child. They did not want to leave and brief respites in the fighting in their neighborhood encouraged them to stay.
Finally, they decided the situation was hopeless. Rana gave birth to a baby boy in late September. Days later, a real estate agent who worked next door was killed by suspected insurgents.
"He was a Sunni and that scared us more," she said.
Sensing that the danger was moving perilously close, the couple moved when their baby was only 10 days old. A few days later, they realized that they may not have moved far enough. A translator for the U.S. military was murdered in his house across the street from their home.
"I still live in fear here," Rana said by telephone. "My husband forces me to go out to the food market with him. When I do, I just pray all the time that nothing happens to us."
She longs for the safety of the Shiite-dominated south but cannot afford to move.
"I wish we just leave the whole of Baghdad and move to the south. It's safe there," she said. "I don't think that things will get any better or any worse. People will just continue to be killed."
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