From TruthDig
By Anna Badkhen

American troops scour Baghdad’s southwestern neighborhood of Saidiyah for sectarian fighters and roadside bombs, fund reconstruction projects, hand out backpacks to schoolchildren and distribute grants to businesses that want to reopen now that sectarian violence in the area has abated.

But there is one important thing the Americans won’t do in Saidiyah, and this causes significant contention between the soldiers and the neighborhood’s community leaders: They will not evict hundreds of families that have illegally moved into houses abandoned when thousands of local residents fled to escape the block-by-block battles between Sunni and Shiite militias last year.

Evicting the squatters would allow the houses’ rightful owners to return from self-imposed exile to the once-upscale neighborhood of rich merchants and former Baath Party officials, say members of Saidiyah’s neighborhood council. Lawyers and doctors would reopen their practices, merchants would reopen their shops, and Saidiyah would prosper again.

But the Americans say that forcing out the squatters would cause a new cycle of displacement and homelessness, causing resentment and discontent among newly displaced families. They refer to an Iraqi government policy the Ministry of Displacement and Migration adopted this year, which prohibits local authorities from evicting displaced Iraqis, even if they are residing in homes unlawfully—and even if it means that the rightful owners must be turned away.

One thing both Americans and Saidiyah neighborhood officials agree on: Regardless of how it is solved, the issue of real estate ownership will cast a pall over the effort to bring reconciliation and prosperity to this part of Baghdad.

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