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Battle for Baghdad spurs 'sectarian' house market http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyID=2006-12-07T134808Z_01_IBO649654_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BAGHDAD-HOUSING.xml&WTmodLoc=InDepthNewsHome_C2_inDepthNews-3
Thu Dec 7, 2006
By Ahmed Rasheed
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The fear of black-clad Shi'ite militia gunmen storming his Baghdad house haunted Abu Aya's nights for months.
After receiving a tip from a Shi'ite friend that he was "next on the list", the soft-spoken Sunni fine art lecturer and sculptor has finally moved out of his home of more than 20 years in a Shi'ite neighborhood and settled in a Sunni area across the Tigris river that divides the Iraqi capital.
"Every time a bomb or a suicide bomber struck Sadr City, I expected Shi'ite militiamen to break into my house and kidnap me or my sons and that we would end up being dead bodies dumped in the garbage," he said, referring to the Shi'ite slum and militia bastion that has been targeted many times by Sunni insurgents.
Fearful of sectarian reprisals that have killed thousands, families from the Shi'ite Muslim majority and the Sunni minority in Baghdad are quietly moving from their homes in mixed areas to relocate in religiously homogenous districts within the capital in a pattern that is consolidating a de facto division.
Baghdad, a city of 7 million, has been religiously mixed for most of its history since it was founded 1,000 years ago -- for centuries it was known as the "City of Peace."
But with death squads forcing many to flee, a new city is emerging -- one with a mostly Sunni west and mainly Shi'ite east divided by the Tigris, which acts as a kind of Beirut-style "Green Line", the front-line that divided the Lebanese city during its war in the 1980s.
The trend has sparked a "sectarian" house market in Baghdad, where demand to move to better neighborhoods is not dictated by traditional real estate considerations such as local schools, transport or parks but by ethnic make-up, estate agents say.
"I have registered more than 50 Sunni families who have asked me to find houses for rent in Sunni areas like Amiriya, Mansour, Yarmuk and Khodhra. Those families left their homes in areas considered dangerous for Sunnis to live in," said estate agent Ahmed Husam al-Taie.
Taie said families living in areas where they are the religious minority are asking for "house swaps" with families from the rival sect also desiring to move to a neighborhood where others of their kind live. In many cases families who agree to "house swaps" even leave their furniture behind.
"I've concluded many rental contracts between Sunni and Shi'ite families. Both left their furniture because gunmen warned them to leave without it," said estate agent Ali al- Saadi, who works in Palestine Street, a major traffic artery that is a flashpoint between rival neighborhoods.
SUNNIS, SHI'ITES, CHRISTIANS AND JEWS
Shi'ites and Sunnis have long lived together in Baghdad, a city which also had a significant number of Jewish and Christian inhabitants until the middle of the last century.
The peaceful Shi'ite-Sunni cohabitation has changed since the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra unleashed a wave of sectarian revenge killings.
Close to half a million Iraqis have fled for other parts of the country, officials say, dividing the nation and Baghdad in ways resembling Bosnia or Lebanon during their conflicts. Many fear these divisions could pave the way for all-out civil war.
Another 1.6 million have fled Iraq altogether.
Saddam Hussein, a member of the Sunni minority that dominated Iraq until Shi'ites swept to power after he was ousted in a U.S.-led invasion, formed Sunni clusters in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad by rewarding military officers with villas and plots.
He also allocated real estate in newly developed neighborhoods based on Baath party affiliation, and consolidated Shi'ite ghettos, where impoverished Shi'ite villagers were settled, such as Sadr City.
Today, every spike in sectarian violence leads to a surge in demand for property in religiously homogenous neighborhoods, real estate agents say. Last month, car bombs planted by suspected Sunni insurgents killed more than 200 Shi'ites in Sadr City in the deadliest attack since the invasion. Shi'ite militias have responded to Sunni attacks by raining mortars into Sunni neighborhoods such as Adhamiya.
After the attack on Sadr City, neighbors in the Sunni Khodhra district spent all night on their rooftops in freezing temperatures, keeping watch for raiding Shi'ite militias.
"We thought they would come at any time. We had neighborhood watch groups patrolling our streets and we were constantly on our phones," said one person.
Some like Majid al-Khuzaie, a 35-year-old Shi'ite civil servant, left his house in Sunni Amiriya but still couldn't find peace of mind. In his new neighborhood, while he is surrounded by Shi'ite neighbors, the nightmare continues with daily mortars and daylight shootings.
"I left my home and rented one temporarily in Amil district, which turned out to be worse," he said. "I don't know where to go because the whole country is a battlefield."
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