Sadr City Concret Wall Not Quite People Tight

The wall -- built along Al Qudis Street, and designated the "Gold Wall" by U.S. forces -- was supposed to push insurgent rocket teams beyond the reach of the Green Zone. Building the concrete barrier was atough fight: Col. John Hort, the commander of the Third Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division, told me that engineers had to breach a "minefield" of improvised explosive devices, often emplaced just five to 10 meters apart. North of the wall, tag teams of drones and attack helicopters loitered overhead, waiting to spot insurgent rocket and mortar teams.

A truce was concluded in May. Iraqi Army units took up positions north of the wall, and a sort of calm settled over Sadr City. It would be a stretch, though, to call it normalcy. Residents of Sadr City must negotiate a maze of checkpoints; entry points to the neighborhood are tightly controlled; and the Jamilla market, the main bazaar, is on the wrong side of the wall for most residents.   

But walls don't always work as planned. I was out on a recent house-to-house search with Iraqi and U.S. soldiers. From a rooftop vantage point, I could see a breach in the wall just a few blocks east of one of the Iraqi-manned checkpoints. It looked as if someone had chipped away at the T-wall concrete with pick or a sledgehammer. Women, young men and children were gingerly making their way through the divide.

"They're not supposed to be doing that," said one of the platoon leaders. An officer radioed down, and one of the squads rolled out in an MRAP to fill the breach with some concertina wire: a temporary fix.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/cracks-in-sadr.html