Maliki Knocks Down Walls (Not Physically)

The AP is reporting that Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki's reaction to the planned wall around Adhamiya (or Azamiya; it appears there are two spellings) is, well, just like everyone else's:

"I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop," al-Maliki said during a joint news conference with the secretary-general of the Arab League. "There are other methods to protect neighborhoods, but I should point out that the goal was not to separate, but to protect."

He also noted that "this wall reminds us of other walls that we reject." Of course it does. It's the same concept.

Horrific Sectarian Violence And 12-Foot Walls: A Recipe For Peace?

The BBC and others are reporting that U.S. troops in Baghdad are in the process of building a wall around Adhamiya, a troublesome Sunni district:

Adhamiya lies on the mainly Shia Muslim east bank of the Tigris river and violence regularly flares between the enclave and nearby Shia areas.

Construction of the 5km (three-mile) concrete wall began on 10 April and the US military says it hopes to complete the project by the end of the month.

US troops, protected by heavily-armed vehicles, have been working at night to build the 3.6m (12 ft) wall.

When it is finished, people will enter and leave Adhamiya through a small number of checkpoints guarded by US and Iraqi forces.

Mustafa, a resident of Adhamiya, told the BBC, "I resent the barrier. It will make Adhamiya a big prison."

Mustafa obviously won't be the only unhappy one. The average Arab -- and this really must be a cultural thing, because I don't understand it at all -- doesn't like having to go through checkpoints run by an occuppying power to leave his or her neighborhood. People are so strange in that part of the world.

The article also notes that "[t]he US military says the barrier is the centrepiece of its strategy to end sectarian violence in the area but insists there are no plans to divide up the whole city into gated communities."

My question is this: Where to go from here? Because the plan, if I'm reading it right, goes as follows:

1. Build walls to separate two ethnic groups that are slaughtering one another.
2. ???
3. The warring ethnic groups war no more.

Number 3 would be a lovely conclusion to the war and also rhymes nicely, so I've been wracking my brain in an attempt to fill in the middle step. Unfortunately, I'm coming up completely empty. Any ideas?

Hopefully the tacticians in the Pentagon and Baghdad are smarter than I.