Saad al-Hadithi, an officer in Squad 17 of Regiments 23 and 25, who is in charge of protecting the southern part of the Baghdad belt, said, “Most of these areas have witnessed demographic changes since the 1970s, when the regime of the former President Saddam Hussein worked on a systematic plan by quietly and confidentially planning to make Iraqis of a certain sect live in Baghdad or its outskirts.”
In an interview with Al-Monitor, he added, “The former regime did not work on forced displacement as much as it worked on the establishment of military industrialization projects and civil laboratories, as well as major security, military and economic institutions that rely on a particular cadre of sects, thus leading to the phenomenon of expelling the residents of other communities from the Baghdad belt.”
In southern Baghdad, which witnessed the spread of huge military industrial plants and critical security institutions, the demographics changed to resemble that of the Babil governorate, creating sectarian clashes that particularly crystallized after 2003.
In each new security crackdown, the Baghdad belt areas receive the lion's share of security procedures.
Abdul-Qader al-Jubouri, who lives in one of the villages of the northern city of Latifiyah, told Al-Monitor, “The raids on houses and farms are not over. They are renewed with every security disturbance.”
About five years ago, Jubouri said, “Al-Qaeda-linked groups had the upper hand in this area, where they killed a lot of people based on their affiliations.” Jubouri continued, “Dozens of Iraqis died in the jungles of this religiously mixed area.”
For these reasons, any military operation in the “belt” is considered to be targeting a given sect. A preacher at the Diyala mosque accused the government of “trying to empty the Baghdad belt of its inhabitants.”
For his part, MP Dhafer al-Ani, a leader in the Mutahidoun coalition, deemed the security operations in the Baghdad belt to be a “genocide.”
The Baghdad belt was never a sectarian mystery, regardless of what happened. Everyone coexisted peacefully, despite pressures of the former dictatorial regime, the sectarian and nationalist selectivity that was practiced and the sectarian sedition that plagued the region after 2003.
However, this mosaic that has been homogeneous for decades — at least on the surface — is now preparing for a new way of life, aspirations and values.
Adnan Abu Zeed is an Iraqi author and journalist.
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