Embedded in Iraq: Friend or foe?
Updated on 06 March 2007
Our special report reveals the tensions in Baghdad as Iraqi soldiers draw guns on US troops while on joint patrol.
Baghdad is in its third week of a major operation by joint US and Iraq forces to reduce the sectarian violence in the city.
Baghdad's Sectarian Divide
17,000 extra US troops are heading to Iraq to stop the fighting. But what will they face? Use our interactive feature to see Baghdad's sectarian divide.
This "surge" on Baghdad includes increased checkpoints and troop numbers on the streets. But outside the heavily fortified Green zone the city is effectively divided into districts along sectarian lines.
The Shia dominate the east with a couple of isolated enclaves west of the Tigris. The rest of the west is dominated by Sunnis
In the first of a series of reports our foreign affairs correspondent Nick Paton Walsh and cameraman/producer Tim Lambon, embedded with the US military, accompanied a patrol of the Twelfth Cavalry to the Shura district - a Shia stronghold in the north-west of Baghdad.
Their report captures vividly the day-to-day reality of the sectarian schism in the troubled city as US forces have to protect Sunnis from brutality and possibly even execution at the hands of Shia police.
Rescued from near-certain death
'Captain Walker had a "hair up his ass", as they say here. He'd just had a very serious incident between his men and the Iraqi National police the day before. Now he'd been told that the Iraqi police (all Shia) at the main police station in his area of operations were holding a Sunni man hostage.'
- Continue reading Tim Lambon's Baghdad blog
Most tellingly, we see Iraqi soldiers drawing their guns against the US troops with whom they are on joint patrol, sparked by the Iraqis wishing to deal with the suspects they arrest in a manner which alarms the Americans.
It is a dramatic insight into the sectarian tensions within Iraq, which threatens to turn the security forces into just another armed faction and capture the US forces in the middle.
