Despite U.S. Military Pressure, Security Worsens in Baghdad

Four months after the start of America’s most recent military campaign to bring security to Baghdad, acts of violence, forced displacement and sectarian killings have increased.

Violence has even spread to areas that had been relatively quiet before the operation, which has brought tens of thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops onto the streets of the capital. Yet these troops have failed to put an end to kidnapping and the dumping of unidentified corpses onto Baghdad’s streets.

Baghdad is divided into two quarters – Karkh and Rasafah – bisected by the Tigris River. Worst hit has been the Karkh side of Baghdad, where pitched battles occasionally take place amid a densely packed population.

Assad Ali, a resident of Karkh, says that fearing the escalating violence, residents sometimes must remain indoors for days.

“Violent acts have set our neighborhoods afire. What logic is there for the government to leave us to our fate this way?” he asked. He said he thought the authorities were more concerned about the Rasafah side of Baghdad, which he said was relatively quiet.

In many places, the ongoing violence has brought businesses to a halt and kept civil servants from going to work, which has aggravated living conditions for the majority of the population.

According to real estate agent Muhsen Hamed, property prices have dropped by almost 50 percent, particularly in Karkh. “There is a continuous flow of families from the most violent areas and into less violent ones,” he said.

Hamed said certain neighborhoods of Baghdad – which have their own vigilante groups – are seeing a rise in property and rents, as more and more families flock to them.

Real estate agents in Karkh say they have lost business due to the ongoing violence.

“I haven’t sold a single house for more than a year,” said real estate agent Abdullatif Raheem.

Raheem said even in nicer areas with a heavy military presence, prices property values have dropped substantially. He said monthly rents in the smart district of Mansour have plummeted from an average of one million dinars [$800] to about 250,000 [$200].