The soft grass of Wisam Ali's front garden in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiyah once beckoned to his friends, sometimes a dozen at a time, to gather and catch up on the news.

But now, "only three or four are left. Most of them were killed," says Mr. Ali, sitting on lawn furniture on the untrampled grass of his home.

In a crescent of neighborhoods on Baghdad's western and southern edges - Abu Ghraib, Sadiyah, Amriyah, and Dora - average Iraqis say sectarian violence has driven people from their homes, shuttered businesses, and killed untold numbers in what appears to be a campaign by armed groups on both sides to drive deeper the wedge between Sunnis and Shiites.

The constitution that will be put to the Iraqi people for a vote this weekend was meant to prevent such violence by unifying the diverse country. But the referendum comes at a time when the country has never seemed more divided.

Shiites describe threatening leaflets fluttering down on their front stoops that are backed up by bombings and shootings by Sunni insurgent groups. Sunnis fear arrests by Shiite-dominated Iraqi police and army or Shiite militias like the government-sanctioned Badr Brigade.

While Baghdad is a teeming metropolis, at the neighborhood level the communities are small and most people know each other, including their religious affiliations. This closeness has spurred many marriages and lifelong friendships between the city's diverse groups. But now such closeness can be a liability for those living in neighborhoods closest to the troubled western areas of Iraq.

The killings and other violence in the neighborhood have driven out most of Ali's neighbors. Those left have closed off their small street from the main road with concertina wire and debris.

Shiites appear to be more often killed in such violence, based on interviews and the frequency of car bombs and other violence directed at Shiites. But Sunnis say ever since the Shiite Islamist party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), swept January's elections, its Badr Brigade militia has stepped up targeted assassinations of prominent Sunnis.

Helicopters often roar overhead and tanks rumble loudly down a main street in the west Baghdad Amriyah neighborhood, a stone's throw from the airport and the American base there.

"Really, I am afraid," says Iyad Ahmed, a Sunni who sells paint and hardware supplies in a shop he is considering closing because of attacks on his street.

He reaches down to a bottom drawer in a desk and reveals the AK-47. "The Iraqi soldiers are not normal soldiers. They come from the [Shiite political] parties ... they come in the clothes of police and kill people."

He charges that his cousin's son was taken by Iraqi security forces, and that he found him dead at a hospital with signs he had been beaten. "I asked the neighbors what happened and they said he was always talking to people about Sunni and Shiite. Only speaking!" exclaimed Mr. Ahmed. "After this I thought the problem [of Sunnis being targeted] in Iraq was very bad."

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