Word: neighborhooding
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Saha is a drab south Baghdad neighborhood of poured concrete apartment buildings that once housed Baghdad hospital workers. But, in this 20-block area, the visitor may see as many as five separate security forces operating at a single intersection at a time. Some stop cars; others frisk passers-by; and still others skulk along the shuttered storefronts. Each nervously eyes the other, fingers on the trigger. It is a scene replicated all over the city...
First, there are the American soldiers, a platoon, which in this case is about 30 men in four Stryker vehicles. Second, the concerned local citizens (CLCs), a neighborhood watch consisting of armed men - all in plainclothes, many overweight - appointed by Sheikh Ali, a Tony Soprano-type character the Americans have come to rely on to keep the peace. The CLCs have been key to America's new "surge" strategy in Iraq...
Because so many unofficial lines of authority have been drawn, some neighborhood residents say they feel like they are a country away from friends and neighbors on the other side of Baghdad. "I want to feel like I'm in one Iraq - with one army, one security force - not these different groups," says Sabeha Hassun, who owns a shop selling women's beauty and clothing supplies just up the street from an American military outpost where a double murder - of CLC members - happened in broad daylight last week...
...police, Pesh Merga, Badr corps. Most Iraqis have two ID's, one [so they can pass for Shi'ite] and one [so they can pass for Sunni]." The checkpoints serve at least one purpose, says Sheikh Ali, the Shi'ite CLC Godfather of Saha market: the guards burn the neighborhood's trash at night to keep warm. "The goats are starting to complain about that," he jokes...
...sitting in a cafe with U.S. Army Captain Kevin Wynes, a civil affairs officer assigned to the 2-2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment in southern Baghdad. Wynes is on his third tour in Iraq and he tells Sheikh Ali that they are partners in defeating the militants and reconstructing the neighborhood. Says Wynes: "We've been partners from the beginning and we'll be partners until the end." Sheikh Ali smiles and nods and tells the bright-eyed and chiseled-jawed Wynes: "Yes - and when we occupy America we'll be partners in your neighborhood...