Word: neighborhooding
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...Washash, few hopes remain for reversing what ethnic cleansing has already done to the neighborhood. Mansur and his neighbor Hassan Hussein, who are both Shi'ites, say they never imagined they would see a day when their neighbors would not only leave but go in fear. For many Iraqis, watching a family move is an experience as solemn as seeing a grave exhumed. "It's really painful to see families we've known for so long leave," says Hussein. "We would eat together. We would sit together. We played together as children. We felt very close." Mansur doubts things...
...Sunni families on the street left Washash. One Sunni family found Shi'ite renters and handed the house over to them quietly. The other Sunni family gave its house to Shi'ite relatives. They were the last two Sunni families on a block that now, like most of the neighborhood...
...Baghdad alone is home to at least 36,000 displaced people. And there is increasing evidence that radical militias, chiefly Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, are orchestrating violent purges aimed at transforming mixed neighborhoods like Washash into ethnic strongholds. U.S. soldiers who raided a suspected Mahdi Army safe house in Washash last month say they found pages from a neighborhood housing log; among the papers was a list of 65 houses where Shi'ite families have replaced Sunni families. On other pages were drafts of threat letters clearly intended for delivery to Sunni homes. The log included a roster...
...Amid the frenzy of repopulation, mixed neighborhoods like Washash have become the main battlegrounds of sectarian warfare. The slum is a maze of tumbledown buildings and is home to 40,000 people - during Saddam's time, roughly divided between Sunnis and Shi'ites. As TIME's Tim McGirk reported on a visit to Washash in August 2005, low-level sectarian murders began more than a year ago. When U.S. soldiers moved into the neighborhood about a month ago to quell the bloodshed, Shi'ites and Sunnis appeared to be targeting one another unpredictably. But as U.S. soldiers learned more about...
...squads typically target in order to frighten a family into abandoning a home. U.S. soldiers who continue to operate in Washash don't believe the ongoing sectarian violence flows just from frictions on the streets there anymore. Instead, they put blame squarely on Mahdi Army operatives from outside the neighborhood, militants who U.S. soldiers say are out to turn Washash into a Shi'ite bastion for al-Sadr on the west side of the Tigris. "Ninety percent of the problem comes from outside in," says 2nd Lieut. Graham Ward, an Army platoon leader who spends many days patrolling house...