Building walls in Iraq

AJ at Americablog has a decent post pointing out the longer term failures of past efforts at building security walls and berms in Iraq. He talks about Tal Afar and Mosul, but I would also add the citywide sequestration of Fallujah.

But separate from that broader argument, I wanted to point to a much more recent counterexample. The massive Sadriya market bombing last week that killed 140.

It was placed at the entrance to a set of barriers put up around another part of the market where a previous single bomb, in February, claimed more than 130 lives.

The market blast "did not penetrate the emplaced barriers" a later US military press release helpfully pointed out, ignoring the fact that the bombers had yet again adapted their tactics with vicious perfection - setting off their device at the point where crowds congregated outside and at the very moment when they were busiest.

Part of this "barrier plan" is the installation of permanent entrance checkpoints with ID checks, biometrics, and all sorts of other time consuming searches. As entrance will only be allowed to those who reside inside, those target rich waiting lines will be almost all one sect.

The access points themselves will become targets.

(The barrier garnering the most attention is the barrier at Adhamiyah, a Sunni enclave, so suicide bombers are not likely there, but these barrier "chokepoints" are popping up all over Baghdad.)