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August 28, 2006

Markets in wierd stuff

You own your own home, but it is becomming too dangerous for those of your ethnicity to to live there. You don't have money to buy a new place to live, so what do you do? You do a swap with someone is a similar situation but a different ethnic group. And that's just what is happening in Iraq:

Mohammed al-Taie's family had lived in Haswa on Baghdad's outskirts for 50 years, but then two months ago, after months of dismissing death threats, al-Taie's brother was kidnapped, and the Shiite Muslim family's 34 members decided it was time to leave their beloved, but mostly Sunni, neighborhood.

So, with the help of a neighbor, they found a Sunni family living in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula and agreed to swap houses.

Such swaps are becoming increasingly common as Iraqis find themselves searching for ways to avoid becoming victim to Baghdad's increasingly vicious cycle of sectarian violence.

There are no hard statistics on how many people have swapped houses in Baghdad. Isam Abu Ali, 35, a representative in al-Sadr's Shula office, said al-Sadr supporters have provided food, blankets, gas, money and even furniture to 2,200 families arriving in Shula alone.

Officials at the Ministry of Immigrants and Displacement, which is led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's independent slate, said they condemned house swapping and had no numbers on it.

Posted by OneEyedMan at August 28, 2006 5:51 PM

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Posted by: -M- at August 28, 2006 10:18 PM

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