A trench in Iraq exacerbates Sunni fears of sectarian partition

HILLA, Iraq — The local official drew a line on a map slicing through farmland and desert southwest of Baghdad whose Sunni Muslim residents have been displaced by fighting, and then pointed just south to the site of the most revered Shiite shrine.

The line marks the course of a 45km trench designed to safeguard the Shiite holy city of Kerbala from Daesh militants who seek its annihilation, said Babel provincial councilman Hassan Fadaam.

"As long as Daesh is in Anbar, this trench will be used to protect the residents of both Babel and Kerbala, which will become a launching point to liberate [Anbar]," he said.

Many Sunnis, however, fear the trench is not a temporary security measure but just one more example of how they are being expelled from sensitive areas in central Iraq, which they say the Shiite majority wants to control.

The trench and an accompanying berm, now more than half built, wind through traditional Sunni tribal lands whose civilian population has been caught in the crosshairs between Daesh terrorists and military offensives by Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces.

"The goal is for the Shiite militias to cleanse the Sunnis from the area," said a sheikh from Al Aweisat, an agricultural region about 40 km southwest of Baghdad that has been cut up by the trench.

"This is a separation line between the Sunnis and the Shiites," he told Reuters.

During the last year of war, tens of thousands of people, most of them Sunnis, fled this stretch of farmland straddling western Anbar province, which Daesh controls and uses to cross to its Syrian strongholds, and Shiite areas to the east and south in Babel and Kerbala provinces.

Fadaam told Reuters traffic will be funnelled through guarded entry points. Watch towers will be constructed every 500 metres along with security cameras and barbed wire, he said, although budget constraints have delayed those installations.

An earlier proposal to build a concrete wall was dismissed as unnecessary and symbolically problematic.

"Topographical change is happening. This has become clear," said Atella Mahdi Al Hemos, a moderate Shiite sheikh from Babel, predicting the trench would lead Iraq towards partition.

"You won't enter without a badge. The badge ends up becoming a passport". 

Defensive line

Daesh's advance last year increased speculation about the splintering of Iraq into Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish regions, but irregular faultlines between the groups would require mass population transfers for that to happen.

Shiite officials and tribal leaders deny the trench, which is three to five metres deep and three to four metres wide, will bring about such a reconfiguration.

"It has no sectarian dimension. It only has a security dimension: to protect the people, Sunni and Shiite alike, from the destruction of Daesh," said Sadoun Muhsin Al Kilabi, a sheikh from Mahmudiya, 20km east of the trench.

He told Reuters that security forces lacked the numbers to secure all areas, making "defensive lines" like the trench a tactical necessity.

Iraq's army nearly collapsed last summer despite receiving billions of dollars in support during the US occupation that ended in 2011. It is now complemented on the battlefield by a mix of Shiite militias and volunteer fighters.

Proponents say the barrier is required to secure military gains and population centres in the south, a stronghold for the Shiite majority that has dominated the country since the US-led invasion in 2003 toppled president Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim.

"After the liberation of Anbar, the barrier will be removed completely," said Fadaam, the local official.

Daesh moved into Anbar's two main cities of Fallujah and Ramadi a year ago, then expanded control of large swathes of the province during last summer's dash across the Syrian border.

Some of those gains have been rolled back, but political divisions have undermined further efforts, and the eradication of the ultra-radical Islamist group from Anbar's vast desert territory could realistically take years.

In the meantime, the trench may help determine how central Iraq is repopulated, with physical partition becoming a reasonable option.

Shakir Al Essawi, city council chairman of Amiriyat Al Fallujah, 20km west of the trench, said local protests have managed to freeze the digging for now. But he fears what could happen if the trench is completed.

"Maybe in the future they will offer land in another place and ask people to move there and they can build houses," he said.

"They will forget about [this] area and it will become part of Shiite Babel".