WESTWARD, HO!:

It may be too late to secure Baghdad's mix: Sectarian strife has changed the capital, solidifying divisions. (Solomon Moore, January 12, 2007, LA Times)

The violence has tilted the demographics of some neighborhoods from one sect to the other. In other neighborhoods, it has consolidated sectarian populations and hardened religious boundaries.

The United Nations estimates that at least 300,000 Baghdad residents have fled the country since 2003, when the capital's population was approximately 6 million people.

In the last 11 months, since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra triggered Iraq's plunge into civil war, about 60,000 Baghdad residents have left their homes for other neighborhoods within the city, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement.

In the last year, the lines dividing Sunnis from Shiites in Baghdad have shifted steadily to the west -- deep into what was formerly the center of the city's Sunni population.

As recently as last summer, many people here considered the Tigris River, which snakes through the center of the capital, a rough boundary between the predominantly Sunni west bank and the largely Shiite east side. But Shiite militias, who are widely believed to have seized the advantage in Baghdad, have pushed the battle lines across the river into places such as Hurriya. By contrast, Sunni fighters have been unable to sustain advances into east Baghdad.

"They're both taking territory from each other, but the Shiites have the upper hand in Baghdad because of Sadr's movement," said a U.S. advisor, referring to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi army, a powerful militia. "They're very aggressively taking over areas and putting Shiite families into Sunni homes," said the advisor, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

It certainly looks like two states will be sufficient.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2007 10:30 AM