Original source URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html?th&emc=th September 16, 2006 Iraqis Plan to Ring Baghdad With Trenches By EDWARD WONG BAGHDAD, Sept. 15 ‹ The Iraqi government plans to seal off Baghdad within weeks by ringing it with a series of trenches and setting up dozens of traffic checkpoints to control movement in and out of the violent city of seven million people, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Friday. The effort is one of the most ambitious security projects this year, with cars expected to be funneled through 28 checkpoints along the main arteries snaking out from the capital. Smaller roads would be closed. The trenches would run across farmland or other open areas to prevent cars from evading checkpoints, said the ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf. ³We¹re going to build a trench around Baghdad so we can control the exits and entrances so people will be searched properly,² he said in a telephone interview. ³The idea is to get the cars to go through the 28 checkpoints that we set up.² American officials said the military had approved of the plan, which has been in the works for weeks. General Khalaf said he did not know how much the construction would cost or how many laborers would be employed. There has been a surge in the number of Iraqis killed execution-style in the last few days, with scores of bodies found across the city despite an aggressive security plan begun last month. The Baghdad morgue has reported that at least 1,535 Iraqi civilians died violently in the capital in August, a 17 percent drop from July but still much higher than virtually all other months. American military officials have disputed the morgue¹s numbers, saying military data shows that what they refer to as the murder rate dropped by 52 percent from July to August. But American officials have acknowledged that that count does not include deaths from bombings and rocket or mortar attacks. American commanders have made securing Baghdad their top priority. They have shifted troops to Baghdad to try to contain the sectarian conflict raging in the capital, which threatens to plunge Iraq into all-out civil war. A security plan promoted in June by American officials and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki involved setting up traffic checkpoints throughout Baghdad, but failed to quell the Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence, which reached a peak in July. Last month, the Americans and the Iraqi government began a new tactic, flooding troubled neighborhoods with thousands of troops and doing searches block by block, then leaving battalions behind to try and win the confidence of residents. That offensive began in southern and western Baghdad and is now moving into eastern neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia that answers to Moktada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric. It is unclear whether Baghdad can really be sealed off, given the city¹s circumference of about 60 miles. With so much terrain, guerrillas might find areas that are unconstrained by the trenches and checkpoints. On the main roads, traffic could be snarled for miles, especially in the final days of Ramadan, when people travel to celebrate with their families. Studies are still being conducted to determine how traffic patterns will be affected. If the outer perimeter proves effective, then perhaps some checkpoints now being operated inside the city could be taken down, easing the traffic, officials said. President Bush said at a news conference on Friday that the Iraqis were ³building a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices, for example.² Military officials said the Iraqis had considered such a project earlier, but decided to go with trenches instead. The wide cordon to be erected around the city is critical to the new security plan and will be completed within weeks, General Khalaf said. American and Iraqi officials have long said the capital is easily infiltrated because it abuts restive areas such as Anbar Province and the region to the south known as the Triangle of Death. Without a ring of security around Baghdad, insurgents and militiamen outside could return to areas cleared during sweeps, General Khalaf said. Similar perimeters have been set up around troubled cities that are much smaller than the capital. The most prominent example is Falluja, the insurgent stronghold in western Iraq that had 300,000 residents before a Marine-led siege in November 2004. Since then, the American military and Iraqi security forces have run the city as a mini police state, with people who want to enter required to show identification cards at checkpoints. The American military built dirt berms with limited entry points around Samarra in the north and Rawah in the western desert. The second-ranking American commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, stressed in an interview the importance of securing Baghdad. ³I¹ll be perfectly clear with you, our main effort right now is Baghdad,² he said. ³It¹s our focus.² There are few quiet days in the capital. Seven bodies were found in four different parts of Baghdad on Friday, an Interior Ministry official said. An American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, and another was killed Thursday night by a bomb northwest of Baghdad, the military said. A soldier was missing after an attack in Baghdad on Thursday in which a suicide car bomber killed two soldiers and wounded 30 others. In Anbar Province, a marine died in combat. On the political front, a senior Shiite cleric rejected any immediate move to create autonomous regions in Iraq, further threatening a proposal by a Shiite politician to establish a legal process for partition. The cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad al-Yacoubi, a fundamentalist Shiite, said that he believed in ³maintaining the unity of the country² and that autonomous regions could not be formed without ³preparing the proper conditions,² according to a statement released Thursday by his office in Najaf. The strong stand against autonomy by Ayatollah Yacoubi further calls into question the viability of a proposal for a mechanism to carve up Iraq that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Parliament¹s Shiite bloc, tried to put to the Parliament earlier this month. Mr. Hakim has long been a strong proponent of creating a nine-province autonomous region in the south that would be ruled by religious Shiites and would include the country¹s main oil fields. He called for Parliament to vote on a proposed mechanism much sooner than virtually anyone had expected. Sunni Arabs generally oppose dividing Iraq because their provinces have little oil. The bloc answering to Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric, later opposed any immediate move toward autonomy. Mr. Sadr and Mr. Hakim are bitter rivals, both struggling for dominance in the new Iraq, and both commanders of powerful militias that have skirmished several times since the American invasion. Ayatollah Yacoubi is close to Mr. Sadr, and their united stand could be enough to block any serious consideration of autonomy for now. Basim Sharif, an official in the ayatollah¹s Fadhila Party, said the ayatollah could decide to support the legislation if it included language saying that Iraq would not break up into autonomous regions anytime soon. Khalid W. Hassan and Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi contributed reporting from Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf. 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