For Iraq's Sunnis, Conflict Closes In

On the other side of Rabiaa Street is a set of railroad tracks nestled on the edge of Tobji, a working-class community of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds. In recent months, bodies of both Shiites and Sunnis have been dumped along the tracks, residents said Sunday. The killings are evidence of how the war to control the capital is spreading and how Shiite militiamen are increasingly pushing into western Baghdad, where Sunnis dominate.

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Farouk's house sits in the heart of Tobji, around the corner from walls with black markings that read "Long Live Sadr." He is burly, with a long, oval face and a thin gray mustache, one of three Sunnis who live on the block.

He met a journalist first on Nov. 30, a week after the Sadr City attacks, on the condition that his father's, grandfather's and tribe's names not be used. Farouk is his great-grandfather's name. He told his Shiite neighbors that he was receiving a visit from co-workers at the government ministry where he is employed.

Even with those precautions, he was worried. Fearful of attracting attention, he rushed his visitor to the second-floor living room of his house. At the top of the narrow staircase, a large poster of Imam Ali, the most revered Shiite saint, along with several other important Shiite figures, stared from a wall. Farouk said he put up the posters the day of the Sadr City attacks -- in case Shiite militiamen came that night. He has no plans to take them down, he said.

"I am scared. I am Sunni," he said that day.

A Showcase of Dangers

In the 1950s, Farouk's Sunni father moved to Tobji. Farouk's mother was a Shiite, and his first name, Ali, is given to both Shiites and Sunnis. He went to school with Shiites and had Shiite friends. Neither sect nor ethnicity defined his identity, even when Hussein, a Sunni, brutally oppressed the Shiite community after he took power.

The war didn't reach Tobji in full force until this year. In January, gunmen wearing police uniforms and driving police vehicles abducted 53 Sunnis. Most were never seen again. The next month, a Shiite shrine in the town of Samarra was bombed, triggering cycles of revenge killings.

Mixed neighborhoods across Baghdad, including this one, started to rip apart. Still, after each attack, Tobji managed to heal momentarily, because of a tribal leadership of Sunnis and Shiites that is struggling to preserve the bonds between their communities.

Today, the last mile to Farouk's house is a showcase of the danger that threatens to overtake their efforts. Around the corner from an Iraqi army checkpoint, young men wearing dark clothes and clutching AK-47 assault rifles stand guard, a testament to the fact that they, not the Iraqi soldiers, are in charge. Some clutch black two-way radios; others stare fixedly into cars. On Sunday, one man stood in the middle of the street with a small piece of white paper, checking the license plates of cars.

The affiliation of the men with guns can be discerned by looking at a nearby concrete barrier. Scrawled in red paint are words boldly expressed in Arabic: "Yes for the Mahdi Army."

Women in black, head-to-toe abayas float like shadows in the sun here. A few blocks away, residents walk past the empty, disfigured house of the Sunni Arab without casting a glance. On a visit four weeks ago, Mahdi Army militiamen, including one who sat in a yellow plastic chair in the middle of the road, stopped cars and demanded:

"Why are you here? What is your tribe?"