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thedrifter
05-27-07, 05:39 AM
The Tribes of Iraq: America's New Allies
U.S. field commanders are finally beginning to tap the traditional networks that helped Saddam to stay in power.
By Melinda Liu
Newsweek

June 4, 2007 issue - Pungent smoke floats through the chandeliers of the tribal chief's reception room. At his home in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province and a onetime Iraqi insurgent stronghold, Sheik Shakir Saoud Aasi is enjoying after-dinner cigars with his guest of honor, battalion commander Lt. Col. Craig Kozeniesky of the 2/5 Marines. Around the room, Marines and Iraqi tribesmen and police are sitting together, swapping jokes and stories. Some of these Iraqis were probably shooting at Americans less than a year ago. Now they and the Marines are fighting side by side against Al Qaeda. "We are not just friends but also brothers," the sheik tells Kozeniesky. "This is a new beginning for both of us." Kozeniesky can only agree: "Things have changed dramatically." A 5-year-old Iraqi boy in traditional robes and headdress is racing around the room and vaulting into U.S. troops' laps. What does he want to be when he grows up? He proudly announces: "American general named Steve!"

The Pentagon is praying that its new allies will reconfigure the war. The success of the Ramadi experiment has given rise to hopes that the model can be applied elsewhere in Iraq. A year ago insurgents were launching nearly 30 attacks a day in the city; now the daily average is less than one. Anbar province as a whole is showing similar improvements. Brig. Gen. John R. Allen, deputy commanding general of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force in Anbar and a tribal-affairs expert, describes the province as "a laboratory for counterinsurgency." From roughly 500 attacks a week, the rate has sunk to barely a third of that figure. Weapons-cache discoveries, based largely on tips from sympathetic Iraqis in Ramadi, have skyrocketed nearly 190 percent. The fledgling local police force could muster only 20 recruits a year ago; today, with local sheiks encouraging tribe members to sign up, it has 8,000.

But even as the Americans rejoice in Ramadi's transformation, they worry that it may not last. Some townspeople are already losing patience as they seek Baghdad's help in rebuilding their community. At the same time, the Shia-dominated central government in Baghdad is in no hurry to do favors for Anbar's overwhelmingly Sunni population. Col. John Charlton, commander of the nearly 6,000 U.S. troops in central Anbar, warns of political trouble ahead if reconstruction falters. "Now that the shooting's stopped, people's expectations have risen wildly," Charlton says. "They want electricity back. They want things fixed now. The question is, can the government step up and deliver the goods?" The danger is that the government will allow Ramadi to languish while America's newfound allies drift back into the jihadists' orbit.

The insurgents are in retreat now, thanks largely to traditional tribal leaders who began trying to organize themselves in late 2005. The radicals of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who were led at the time by the murderous Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, "went after them with a vengeance," says General Allen. "It was very bloody and very ugly." Late last year local sheiks—most of whom had by this point lost family members to the killings—formed a group they called Anbar Awakening. Their leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Rishah, had lost three brothers and his father to insurgent attacks. The sheiks ordered their followers to assist the Americans against the jihadists—and among Iraq's tribesmen even today, the sheik is the law.

After the Awakening's sheiks began urging their followers to join the police, enlistments soared. The quick drop in attacks would seem to indicate that many of the newly minted cops were once part of the insurgency. While declining to take a public stand on a nationwide amnesty, the Americans aren't asking too many questions. The names of new recruits are checked against a list of previously detained insurgents, but most background checks are left to the sheiks. "In every counterinsurgency, one of the indicators ultimately of some level of success [was] that the people who fought you decided not to fight you anymore," says General Allen. "We're not naive," says Colonel Charlton. "Some police could've been insurgents at this time last year. But the sheiks have changed their fundamental understanding of who the threat is—and the threat is Al Qaeda."

With Larry Kaplow and Babak Dehghanpisheh in Baghdad and John Barry in Washington

Ellie