In Baghdad, a sense of home resurfaces a decade after ethnic cleansing
Aziz Ali Hassan will never forget the graffiti warning that appeared on his family home at the peak of Iraq’s sectarian war in late 2006, when Baghdad’s mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods were gripped by brutal ethnic cleansing. Sunni militants linked to Al Qaeda had taken over the western Baghdad district of Al-Adel, forcing out Shiite families […]Scott Peterson writes for The Christian Science Monitor:
Aziz Ali Hassan will never forget the graffiti warning that appeared on his family home at the peak of Iraq’s sectarian war in late 2006, when Baghdad’s mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods were gripped by brutal ethnic cleansing.
Sunni militants linked to Al Qaeda had taken over the western Baghdad district of Al-Adel, forcing out Shiite families like Mr. Hassan’s.
Decades of living peacefully together – built on a sense of home and sanctuary, amid a tradition here of mutual reliance and neighborly care – was disintegrating before his eyes.
