Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Blast walls start coming down in Baghdad

"At a time when other parts of the Arab world are in turmoil, Iraq is feeling stable enough to begin removing some of the tall concrete blast walls that went up as protection against bombings and insurgents during the height of the war.

Iraqis have seen it before. In 2009 Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki started taking down walls, only to restore them when a series of government buildings were bombed.

But in the past couple of weeks they've been coming down again, starting in Baghdad, and if this time it's for good, traffic jams will ease, trade will pick up and Baghdadis will be rid of an ugly symbol of everything Iraq has gone through since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion."

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