JOURNAL: Gated Communities for Baghdad?

Friday, 20 April 2007

JOURNAL: Gated Communities for Baghdad?

Classic counter-insurgency runs into problems when faced by a modern city. The connectivity that is necessary for a city's operation undermines any attempts to hold cleared districts. Recent developments indicate that the COIN team in Baghdad is starting to think the same way. As a result, we will see lots of attempts at ways to reduce this connectivity without destroying the economic basis for the city. The approach that the US military has opted for is an inversion of the gated community approach. It will wall off restive districts from the rest of the city rather than protect successful ones -- the first wall to go up will be a three mile, 12-ft high barrier around the Sunni Adhamiya district. However, since the barrier is based on subtraction (it reduces the connectivity for the restive district to the rest of the city), it will serve to lock-in failure since economic activity will likely halt in the affected area.

Posted at 07:21 AM | Permalink

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