IRAQ: Mother of all walls

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The drab concrete barriers that protect against gunfire and explosions have become a defining feature of the Iraqi capital in the nearly five years since U.S.-led forces invaded. They snake between warring neighborhoods, loop around marketplaces and shelter police stations and government offices from attack.

Iraqis grumble sometimes about living in a prison. But the U.S. military says the walls have made it difficult for insurgents to stage the massive bombings that used to claim dozens of lives every day, and it has exported the strategy to other strife-torn areas. Work is now nearing completion on the mother of all walls, a 50-mile barrier that will protect the network of pipes delivering crude from the Kirkuk oil field to the refinery in the city of Baiji, at a cost of nearly $30 million.

The oil industry is the government’s main revenue source and a frequent target of insurgents. There have been more than 460 attacks against oil infrastructure and personnel since the war started, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security.

Work on the new barrier, which already stretches as far as the eye can see, began in July and is scheduled to be completed in May. Iraqi companies have been contracted to put in the ditch, berm, chain-link fence and razor wire that make up the barrier on either side of the pipeline.

Opinion about the project seems to be mixed. An official reached at Iraq’s North Oil Co. welcomed the extra security but said the price tag was steep, and suggested that the money could have been better spent on hiring more guards to patrol the length of the pipeline.

U.S. officers say the barrier will quickly pay for itself by preventing attacks that cost the government millions in lost revenue and repair bills. They are also working with the Defense Ministry to mentor and train the Iraqi security forces that protect oil infrastructure.

Abdul-Rahman Amir, a 55-year-old Kirkuk resident, suggested that the authorities might want to follow Saddam Hussein’s example and recruit local tribal leaders to secure the pipeline. ‘If a number of tribesmen had been recruited into the security regiments, then it would have helped in quelling the attacks,’ he said.

Sound familiar?

— Alexandra Zavis in Baghdad and a Times special correspondent in Kirkuk