Sha'ab, Baghdad

Sha'ab (Arabic: الشعب‎) is a neighborhood of Adhamiyah district, Baghdad, Iraq, It is subdivided to Sha'ab east (22nd), Sha'ab south (23rd), Sha'ab north (24th).

Two adjoining neighborhoods abutting Sadr City's northern border, Shaab and Ur, were built in the 1960s and 1970s to house middle-class government workers. It was formerly mixed, but Shiite cleansing started in 2005, and last fall and winter Ur became a favored dumping ground for bodies from all over Baghdad, with 121 bodies showing up in December near a mechanic's shop on the area's outer edge. Today the area (Shaab, Ur and neighboring Binouk) are nearly as Shiite as Sadr City. The killings have dwindled, and with sectarian homogeneity has come a greater sense of security; the commercial districts have expanded with new cosmetic and clothing stores that suggest rising incomes. American troops pounded through here in February as part of the new military strategy, and residents report that the operation scattered many of the worst Mahdi commanders at the time. Shiite militias remain a powerful force, but according to some residents, they govern with less brutality than in some parts of western Baghdad where Shiites still feel threatened.[1]

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