U.S. sponsorship of Sunni groups worries Iraq's government

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — The American campaign to turn Sunni Muslims against Islamic extremists is growing so quickly that Iraq's Shiite Muslim leaders fear that it's out of control and threatens to create a potent armed force that will turn against the government one day.

The United States, which credits much of the drop in violence to the campaign, is enrolling hundreds of people daily in "concerned local citizens" groups. More than 5,000 have been sworn in in the last eight days, for a total of 77,542 as of Tuesday. As many as 10 groups were created in the past week, bringing the total number to 192, according to the American military.

U.S. officials said they were screening new members — who generally are paid $300 a month to patrol their neighborhoods — and were subjecting them to tough security measures. More than 60,000 have had fingerprints and DNA taken and had retinal scans, American officials said, steps that will allow them to be identified later, should they turn against the government. The officials said they planned to cap membership in the groups at 100,000.

But that hasn't calmed mounting concerns among aides to Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who charge that some of the groups include "terrorists" who attack Shiite residents in their neighborhoods. Some of the new "concerned citizens" are occupying houses that terrified Shiite families abandoned, they said.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/22259.html

As long as chaos reigns in Iraq, we can't leave.

That pretty much describes the U.S.'s long standing ME policy.

country's strengths. This stratagy will, sooner or later, come back to kick us in the ass.

and keep Blackwater there to stir up some shit and they will be killing each other from now on. Just what W and the Dick wants. And this neutered Congress will not do anything about it- ass-holes.

Those that are generally anti-war and dispute whether the "surge" has any usefulness like this. Al-Awad's important, he calls the shots, he's from an important tribe.

Those that aren't anti-war (many can't properly be called pro-war, and it's not like there's not a middle ground) or think that the surge might be useful tend to point out that his tribe is fairly insignificant, he's not really in charge of it, and he's had a dual role--presenting himself for a while as the face of the opposition to the Iraqi government and the face of the US/Iraqi government to the opposition.

Wouldn't be the first time an outsider was taken in. At one point there was a minor literature in linguistics on some Indian jargon, which, it turns out, was made up--the jargon, not the literature. The tribe members simply didn't want to entrust the researchers with a tribal secret, so more than one tribe member simply lied. Took a decade or two to figure out the deceit. Then there's Mead, snookered by her own blindness. Easy to find what you want--confirmation bias is one of many banes in a researcher's existence--and the New Yorker is fairly clear on its editorial stance. Take Kawwal's "11 members of my family were gunned down" claim--in which his mother denied it (with people saying that perhaps his mother didn't know the facts), even though Kawwal claimed he got his information from his mother (oops). In the New Yorker case, the two competing claims--and there are only two people involved making the claims, and I'm treating them simply as generally unsupported claims--cancel each other out. Mostly.

In any event, that al-Awad's in Jordan means that the elementary-school graduate went into "voluntary exile" not in the very recent past, and it's puzzling that he hasn't deemed it necessary to return home for the many councils that have been held there. For such a crucial player, his absence is, well, inexplicable. For somebody who knows what's going on, saying things so out of line with other pronouncements is also inexplicable--one could say that if he's a major player they're either wildly culturally inappropriate *or* he's trying to encourage failure. I find the first inplausible and the second contrary to what he's reported to be saying. Assuming the reporter's not made up or distorted his words, I can't think of a third option. This pushes me vaguely, but not conclusively, to the "al-Awad's a bloated minnow in a big pond" POV.