by Salam Faraj

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BAGHDAD, Sept 17, 2007 (AFP) - A Belfast-style concrete wall erected to stop warring Shiite and Sunni militias attacking each other in two adjacent Baghdad neighbourhoods has also succeeded in separating Shiites from Shiites.

The US military this month erected a wall hundreds of metres (yards) long and five metres (16 feet) high between the predominantly Shiite Shuala neighbourhood and the majority Sunni Ghazaliyah district.

But the latter district of northwest Baghdad also has a small Shiite community who now find themselves cut off from their co-religionists in Shuala and caught between the wall and their sectarian foes.

"We are one people. This is not Israel and Palestine that we need to have such walls," fumed Hashim, a Shiite from Ghazaliyah, as he made the lengthy detour around the wall and across a stagnant canal to reach Shuala, where he works as a primary school teacher.

In the more than four years that the US military has been in Iraq, hundreds of similar concrete walls have been erected in neighbourhoods around the capital, some of them cutting across major thoroughfares.

Key buildings and institutions have been walled in by large concrete blocks, which also seal the heavily fortified Green Zone in the city centre where the Iraqi government and foreign embassies are located.

The Belfast-style walls have been compared to the separation barrier Israel has been building the length of the occupied West Bank which Palestinians refer to as the "apartheid wall".

In the Northern Ireland capital of Belfast, iron, brick and steel barriers dubbed "peace lines" still divide some Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods four months after the formation of a power-sharing government uniting the province's sectarian foes.

In April, the US military came in for widespread criticism from Iraqis when it began constructing a ring of six-tonne (14,000 pound) concrete blocks around the Sunni Adhamiyah neighbourhood to prevent it from being mortared from nearby Shiite areas.

Many Iraqis argue that the barricades, which US commanders term "concrete caterpillars", only serve to heighten tensions between Sunnis and Shiites by segregating the once mixed city.

Now it's the turn of the Ghazaliyah and Shuala neighbourhoods, and for many residents the barrier is not welcome.

"Who does the wall protect us from?" asked Sayed Dhyaya, a Shiite cobbler who has a small shop in one of Shuala's alleyways.

"There are Shiites on the other side of the wall too. They are caught between the Sunnis and the wall."

With the Muslim holy month of Ramadan well under way, the presence of the wall is even more noticeable as people who were once neighbours can now no longer just drop by to exchange the traditional greetings.

Here the barrier has been dubbed the "wall of hatred."

"The wall is US terrorism," reads a big red banner with black letters on one of the concrete blocks. "No, no to the dividing wall," says another, stretching over two of them.

Residents from both sides of the new barrier held a protest march last week, during which they shouted anti-US slogans and demanded that it be torn down.

"The wall is creating hatred and isolation between people who are observing this holy month of Ramadan," said Um Ali, a 50-year-old Shiite woman from Ghazaliyah.

Um Ali has suffered heavy personal losses since the US-led invasion of 2003, with three of her sons killed in separate incidents.

"The wall is causing troubles to all and is preventing neighbours from looking at each other," she said, as she headed to the Shuala market to shop for her family for the evening meal that breaks the daytime fast observed by the faithful during Ramadan.

The market used to draw shoppers from both neighbourhoods before the wall up.

"Large number of Ghazaliyah residents used to come to Shuala market, but the numbers are dropping despite their need to buy goods for Ramadan," complained stallholder Abu Ali.

His view was echoed by Um Raid, 39, one of the few who still makes the long detour to get to Shuala from Ghazaliyah.

"The wall is making it hard to get to the market. Many of our Sunni shoppers from Ghazaliyah used to come to Shuala during Ramadan but now they can't," she said.

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