In Balad, Age-Old Ties Were 'Destroyed in a Second' - washingtonpost.com

In Balad, Age-Old Ties Were 'Destroyed in a Second' - washingtonpost.com: "In Balad, Age-Old Ties Were 'Destroyed in a Second'
Sectarian Battles Drive Out Sunnis, Create State of Siege

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 23, 2006; A12

OUTSIDE BALAD, Iraq -- At midweek, Shiite Interior Ministry commandos and their Shiite militia allies cruised the four-lane hardtop outside the besieged city of Balad, trying to stave off retaliation for a deadly four-day rampage in which they had all but emptied Balad of Sunnis.

Sunni insurgents pouring in to take that revenge patrolled the same highway, driving battered white pickups and minivans, their guns stashed out of sight. Affecting casualness, more Sunni men gathered on rooftops or clustered on the reed-lined edge of the highway, keeping an eye on the Shiite forces and the few frightened civilians who dared to travel the highway past Balad.

What brought this Tigris River city north of Baghdad to this state of siege was a series of events that have displayed in miniature the factors drawing the entire country into a sectarian bloodbath: Retaliatory violence between Sunnis and Shiites has soared to its highest level of the war, increasingly forcing moderates on both sides to look to armed extremists for protection."