Behind the WALL: Inside Baghdad's Sadr City

Enders features the impoverished slums of Sadr City, which was emphatically called "Saddam City" under the dictator's reign, the neighborhood's population far exceeds the number of people its infrastructure was designed to serve, and on three of its four sides it has sprawled to house newcomers, some in little more than one-room cinderblock dwellings with no running water and jury-rigged electricity. Beginning in 2003, the streets of the slum saw a succession of uprisings against and counteroffensives by the US military and Iraqi government. With the intervention of Shiite religious authorities, and more recently with the Iranians playing a possible role, the fighting has ended each time in a political resolution--allowing the militia to claim victory and each time emerge more visibly powerful.