IRAQ: Walls will increase violence, specialists say

"BAGHDAD, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - BAGHDAD, 23 April 2007 (IRIN) - Baghdad specialists and citizens have hit out against the US strategy of building walls around Sunni districts that are surrounded by Shia areas. They say such barriers would worsen the lives of thousands of Iraqis and would increase violence.

"When they build barriers, automatically they are assuming the existence of religious and ethnic differences in Iraq, reinforcing the fighting groups' beliefs," Jassem al-Rheiri, a sociology professor at Baghdad University, said......"