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Advertisement | Just Another Day: Living In BaghdadLara Logan On How Ordinary Citizen Cope In Iraq's CapitalApril 22, 2007 ![]() ![]() Baghdad Family Copes With LifeIn Full: Bombs, shootings and long gas lines are just some of the obstacles that residents of Iraq's capital city must deal with daily to survive. Lara Logan reports. | Share/Embed (CBS) Dr. Quoresh hasn’t forgotten the people they left behind on Haifa Street. He and his family told 60 Minutes they witnessed Shiite fighters executing unarmed Sunni civilians, evidence of the growing hatred between the two sects. Baghdad today is a divided city, something that's not so obvious in some neighborhoods that look pretty much like they used to, blending easily into one another. But in other areas, it is a different story. There are now distinct sectarian borders between some neighborhoods. Many have been ethnically cleansed, carving up the capital along sectarian lines and separating Sunni from Shia. Mahmud’s neighborhood used to be mixed, but he says fellow Sunnis have forced out most of the Shiite residents. "So, overnight with no warning people were just forced to leave their homes, just told to go?" Logan asks Mahmud. "Sometimes 'Now you have 10 minutes to leave your house,'" he tells Logan. If they refuse and don't leave, Mahmud says, they get killed. For Mahmud this is one of the most distressing things about the new Iraq. "We don't need this. We don't need this. Why if I am Shia or Sunni. What's the different? I am Muslim. That's enough," he says. Many Iraqis feel the same way, but the body count from Shiites and Sunnis killing each other tells a different story. Families on both sides have been devastated. Mahmud says he has lost 14 family members. Asked what happened to them, he says, "Someone who was killed by shooting. Someone he killed by a militia." Asked if it's hard for him to think about them, Mahmud says, "Yes, believe me. It's very difficult." Like most Iraqis, Mahmud is so desperate for security, he would like nothing more than for the new U.S. security plan to work. With the troop surge, U.S. soldiers are now a constant presence in dangerous neighborhoods like Adamiya for the first time. But with al Qaeda terrorists determined to see the U.S. fail, and the ongoing cycle of revenge killings between Sunnis and Shiites, many Iraqis are skeptical. "Why did they come?" Mahmud wonders. "The new plan will not change anything?" Logan asks. "Believe me not," he says. Asked if he is going to leave Iraq, Mahmud tells Logan, "Now? Yes, I will leave Iraq." Days after the 60 Minutes interview, Mahmud and his family stocked up on fuel, packed their belongings, and like hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis, headed for the Syrian border. Produced By Peter Klein and Jeff Newton | Advertisement |
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