Signs of hope in a former Baghdad killing field

For residents of Azamiyah, once one of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods, the opening of a department store selling party dresses, men's suits and imported designer label perfumes is a sign that could lie ahead a better future.
Just five years ago, what a terrifying place Azamiyah. Shiites and Sunnis butchered bodies of sectarian killings in turned up almost daily, dumped on sidewalks or in trash piles, one street earning the name "Street of Death." Fearful residents huddled at home.ballkleider günstig, A U.S. infantry company lost 13 men on patrol here to snipers and roadside bombs during the bloodiest period of 2006 and 2007.
Now the glass-fronted five-story department store stays open MaxiMall as late as midnight, Sunnis and Shiites and shop side by side. Azamiyah is overwhelmingly Sunni, but sales people say they get many customers from surrounding Shiite areas, drawn by colorful displays and air conditioning that offers a welcome relief from Baghdad's dusty heat.
Multilevel shopping centers are rare quiet in Baghdad, abendkleider online,and the $ 3 million investment by the Turkish owners of MaxiMall, Which opened in April, is seen as a show of confidence in Azamiyah's future.
"The terrorists have failed, and Baghdad is turning into a city of life instead of being a city of death," said Umm Zaid, 45, browsing through the store with three children in tow. "It is no longer a risk to take my kids to the streets and shops."
But many fear the calm will not last.
Sunnis, though a minority in Iraq, were the dominant group under toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. Now they feel vulnerable to the whims of the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has been accused of stoking sectarian tensions by Sunni and Kurdish coalition partners sidelining.
As a former stronghold of support for Saddam and a center of Sunni pride, Azamiyah feels Particularly exposed, said Mohammed Daoud, a local member of the local Sunni council. "Azamiyah will be a target and wants to move backward" if sectarian violence resumes, he said. "But if the political problem is solved, Azamiyah will witness a quick development."
The heavy presence of the Iraqi army is seen as a provocation in Particular Azamiyah. The neighborhood is cut off from the rest of Baghdad by a loop of the Tigris River and a 12-foot-high (4-meter) wall of cement slabs Erected by U.S. troops in 2007.
Five years later, army checkpoints control movement into and out of the neighborhood, with lines of cars backing up even in off-hours. abendkleider lang,Coils of barbed wire and large cement blocs close some streets. Soldiers in Humvees monitor potential hotspots, the Abu Hanifa mosque as search, perhaps the most important Sunni shrine in Iraq and a past hub for insurgents.
During Saddam's rule, middle-class Azamiyah famous for its barbecue restaurants that drew that Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds alike for late-night feasts of skewered lamb. The scholar Abu Hanifa mosque was a regionally renowned center of Sunni learning and holds the remains of a revered Sunni. Members of the Hashemite dynasty that ruled Iraq briefly are buried in a mausoleum on the edge of Azamiyah.
On April 9, 2003, when most had already fall of Baghdad to American troops, Saddam chose for his load Azamiyah public appearance, climbing on top of a car to exhort dozens of supporters to keep fighting the invaders before he slipped into hiding. The neighborhood fell quickly, but only after a fierce battle, and eventually turned into a base for al-Qaeda-led insurgents.
During the sectarian fighting of 2005-2007, the Sunni enclave and its outskirts became one of the main battlegrounds for Sunni and Shiite death squads.
Ashreen Street in Azamiyah, close to the center, soon earned the nickname "Street of Death" because of the large number of bodies found there - most shot in the head execution-style, but others with signs of torture, seeking as nails driven through victims' limbs. Stores opened only for a couple of hours a day, and frightened residents sought refuge in their homes well before nightfall.
Maj. Michael Baka, who commanded Charlie Company, in which infantry unit assigned to Azamiyah, said that on his very first patrol in August 2006, abendkleider günstig, he found a dead man in a trash pile. On a U.S. military map that tracked where bodies were found, "just blew up my sector like a light," he said by phone from Afghanistan, his current posting. "There were dots everywhere."
Mohammed, the local council member said, about 1.000 residents have been killed Azamiyah since 2003 and that some fled 5,000, including 2.000 and 3.000 Shiites Sunnis. About half the Shiites have since returned, while the vast Majority of Sunni refugees - those who generate rally were better off and settled in other countries - remain in exile.
Ahmed Mohammed, a 39-year-old real estate agent, fled with his wife and three children to Egypt in 2006, after he was threatened by insurgents for business ties with Americans. A Sunni, he returned to Azamiyah for work in 2009 after he ran out of money, but keeps his family in Egypt.
"There is not a single reason that makes me optimistic about the future," he said. "There are no services and risks are high.
Amer Hasnawi, a Shiite, left Azamiyah in 2006, afraid to get caught by militiamen, even though he both Shiite and Sunni protectively Carried IDs. "My Sunni neighbors were urging me not to leave," said the 39-year-old furniture salesman and father of two. "I told them,` You are not going to protect me when the gunmen come to me at night or if I am arrested while walking in the street. ' "
He returned in late 2007, to a warm welcome from his Sunni neighbors, and said the situation has improved dramatically. "Now there is a kind of coexistence," he said. "People in the end discovered that killings will not solve their problems."
Across Baghdad, the level of violence has dropped Considerably in recent years, though from time to time insurgents target sites quietly religious, government officials and members of the security forces in bombings and shootings. Earlier this week, 23 people were killed in a suicide bombing outside the Shiite Endowment, Iraq's Shiite running the office religious and cultural sites.
Azamiyah residents complain that security forces conduct frequent arrest sweeps. They believe Sunni applicants are not given a fair chance in the public sector hiring and municipal services that are even worse in their neighborhood than elsewhere in Baghdad.
"I want to stay in my country, but the future is uncertain because we can not see a ray of hope," said Hamid al-Azami, 45, a doctoral student in Islamic studies who also works as a barber in a narrow stall in the open-air market outside the Abu Hanifa mosque.
Lt.. Gene. Baidani Hassan, a top security official Baghdad, denied that troops are singling out Azamiyah and said about half the checkpoints would be removed later this month, after at important Shiite religious holiday. Mohammed Hashim, a city spokesman, said services are bad all over Baghdad, not just in Sunni areas. Since the US-led invasion, Iraqis have endured daily power cuts.
Azamiyah residents reserve their greatest bitterness of some for the United States.
Mohammed, the local council member, said he bluntly told U.S. officials during a trip by an Azamiyah delegation to Washington in 2008 that "you have destroyed the country and people hate you."
Still, residents said American soldiers made in effort to rally generated neighborhood's civilians, could be reasoned with and contributed to the gradual improvement since security save 2008th U. S. troops withdrew from Iraq in December.
Maj. Cecil Strickland, who took command of Charlie Company in March 2007, said He Believes the unit, Which lost 13 soldiers over 15 months, served as a catalyst for the turnaround.
"I think we did not waste our time," he said in a phone interview from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even then, he said, not without hope that Azamiyah. "I would like to think that some of that hope has come to fruition," he said.